Could the media please stop to repeat the lunatic uttering of this idiot?
Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili told foreign reporters his country’s army has killed several hundred Russian servicemen and shot down at least 80 Russian aircraft.
Someone should tell Saak to SHUT UP instead of emphasizing Russian casualties (which are very likely much lower than he says). Consider how such talk sounds on Russian TV and how Russian civilians and politicians will react to it.
The Russians military has now moved some tanks into Georgian heartland:
Russia opened a second front of fighting in Georgia on Monday, sending armored vehicles beyond two breakaway provinces and seizing a military base in the country’s west, Georgia’s Defense Ministry and a Russian official said.
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The move followed Russia’s warning to Georgian forces west of Abkhazia to lay down arms or face a Russian military action. Senaki is located about 30 miles east of the Inguri River, which separates Abkhazia from Georgia proper.
big map
Senaki is a railway and street node between the only big Georgian harbor of Poti in the west at the Black Sea and the center of Georgia. This move makes sure that Georgian replenishment of weapons and ammunition by ship (from whom?) will not go through.
Saak should better get serious with making peace. Unfortunately the ‘west’ is still cheering him on. The French foreign minister had Saakashvili sign some cease-fire agreement. According to the German Spiegel (in German) the paper includes a demand for "retreat of all forces from the conflict zone under international observation and the start of political negotiations." This is the ‘western’ endgame plan I described two days ago:
The ‘western’ media reporting will now align with the official U.S. policy. Russia is the culprit for all these dead and it must be pushed out of South Ossetia and punished to regain peace. Then the ‘west’ will come in and oversee the ethnic cleansing of Ossetians by Georgian forces. Kosovo anyone?
People who read those ‘left’ media like the Independent might fall to that line. The Russians will not and there is no chance that this U.S. policy will be implemented.
Kouchner will now fly to Moscow and ask Medvedev to sign that paper too. Medvedev will have some exquisit words for him and some ideas into what dark place Kouchner should stick that paper.
The Russian conditions are clear:
- return to the status quo ante
- complete stand-down of Georgian forces
- a binding Georgian agreement not to use force against South Ossetia and Abkhasia.
- no foreign troops (i.e non Russian) in South Ossetia and Abkhasia
Any prolonging of the process now will lead to further Russian gains on the ground and a longer list of demands (reparations? sack Saak? war tribunals? …)
Meanwhile the U.S. has flown some 800 Georgian soldiers and some of their equipment back to Georgia.
Was that really a smart move?
In April Russia had agreed to allow NATO equipment for forces in Afghanistan to be transported through its country. I expect that from now on there will be some difficulties for such transports with customs or the availability of rail cars. This at a time when the neo-Talibans are pondering plans to disrupt NATO’s main supply line through Pakistan.
Is the U.S. willing to give up on Afghanistan for the little blusterer in Georgia? Is meddling in the Caucasus really in U.S. interests?
Medvedev today again emphazised the strategic realm of the Russian Federation:
"We have never been and will never be passive observers in the region," the president said at a meeting with the leaders of parliamentary factions. He stressed Russia’s historical role as "a guarantor of security" in the Caucasus.
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Sidenote:
The war continues in cyberspace. Civil.ge, and other Georgian websites, can only be reached sporadically. As annie found the Russian news site RIA Novosti was down too. It is up again and reports to have also suffered from cyber-attacks. Such attacks may be state sponsored, but they are so easy to do that a bunch of creative ‘script-kiddies’ can manage to pull down all but the strongest websites.
