The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Russia Blockades Port in Georgia and Seizes Soldiers

(Georgians with their eyes covered sit atop of a Russian armored personnel carrier while being detained by Russian troops in the Black Sea port city of Poti, western Georgia, Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008. Russian troops entered the port of Poti on Tuesday, to detain people and to loot US military equipment left behind after a joint Georgian, US military exercise. The movements of Russian forces in Georgia raised questions about whether Russia was fulfilling its side of the cease-fire intended to end the short but intense fighting between Georgians, Russians and its allies.)

KARALETI, Georgia — Russian soldiers in armed personnel carriers blockaded the main commercial port in the Black Sea town of Poti on Tuesday and took Georgian soldiers prisoner. An explosion could be heard from the port, where Russian troops sank Georgian ships earlier this week. An Associated Press report said 22 Georgians were being held. The situation was evolving, but if Russian forces have seized control of the port it is further evidence of continued Russian military activity on Georgian territory despite reassurances that they would withdraw. The situation was tense, with a ring of Georgian police officers surrounding the port. Russian forces have patrolled the area regularly since entering Georgia from the west 10 days ago. Since the Kremlin claimed on Monday to have begun withdrawing troops from Georgia, there has been little evidence of change on the ground. Further east from Poti, Russian soldiers continued digging in to positions along the highway approaching the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, showing no sign of pulling back from the severest confrontation between Russia and the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In addition, Russian troops were building new checkpoints on Tuesday a few miles north of the central Georgian city of Gori, using backhoes to cut deep trenches at the edge of the town of Karaleti and using cranes to stack concrete blocks into barricades. The checkpoints in Karaleti seemed to be in line with information the Russians released a day earlier, which clarified the scope of their proposed withdrawal. A 1999 document written up by the Joint Control Commission, an international body that monitored tensions in South Ossetia, gives peacekeepers access to a long piece of land that extends about nine miles into Georgian territory, and right through Karaleti. The Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, has said Russian peacekeepers would pull back from other Georgian territory but remain inside that area. In Moscow, a high-ranking security official said Tuesday that he had received intelligence about Georgian-planned terrorist attacks on Russian soil.

The official, Alexander Bortnikov, the Federal Security Service chief, said he had ordered tightened security at transportation hubs, industrial facilities and densely populated areas in Russia’s southernmost district, whose border stretches from Ukraine, through Georgia and as far as Kazakhstan, Interfax reported. There are still many remaining questions about Russia’s intentions in Georgia. Russia’s state news agency, the Russian Information Agency, reported Monday that one of its correspondents had seen small convoys of 5 to 10 tanks moving north through the Roki tunnel toward Russia. But in Washington, Defense Department and military officials said there was no evidence of Russian forces’ complying with pledges to pull back. “We have not seen any significant Russian movement out of Georgia today,” one senior Pentagon official said Monday. On the ground in Georgia, about 25 miles outside the capital along the main highway, four Russian armored personnel carriers passed a Russian checkpoint at the village of Igoeti on Monday and headed in the other direction, toward Tbilisi. Soldiers were piled on top, cradling Kalashnikov rifles.

As they drove by, one old man, Koba Gurnashvili, stepped into the road and yelled at them, “Where do you think you’re going!” One of the soldiers yelled back, “To Tbilisi.” But they did not, instead turning up a side road leading to a village near the border with South Ossetia. They stopped at an intersection blocked by Georgian police cars. The Russian commander climbed off his tank and began arguing with the Georgian police officers. He said he had orders to move up the road; a Georgian officer said he had orders to remain on the road, and asked to call his superiors for guidance. The Russian said, “You have three minutes to move your cars.” The two argued for a few minutes more. Then the police officers stepped away from their cars, stone-faced, with their keys. The tank smashed aside the cars and kept going. In Crawford, Tex., where President Bush is vacationing, a White House spokesman said Monday that the United States was closely watching whether Russia honored its agreement to withdraw. The spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said it was too soon to say whether the Russians were in compliance.

But he said that any military equipment or forces sent into the region during the fighting needed to be withdrawn under the cease-fire agreement. “If it rolled in after Aug. 6, it needs to roll out,” Mr. Johndroe told reporters, referring to the day before the conflict started. Mr. Medvedev on Monday cautioned that any force used against these soldiers would provoke a response. “Obviously, if anyone thinks he can kill our citizens, our soldiers and officers who are serving as peacekeepers, and go unpunished, we will never allow this,” Mr. Medvedev said. “Anyone who tries this will receive a devastating response. For this, we have all the means — economic and political and military. If anyone had illusions about this some time ago, then they must part with those illusions now.” He added: “We do not want to aggravate the situation, but we want to be respected, and our government to be respected, and our people to be respected, and our values.” France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who brokered the deal, has clarified that it does not allow Russia to block the main highway, or for Russian soldiers to occupy the strategically important central city of Gori, astride the east-west highway; nonetheless, tanks were on the highway on Monday.

On a visit to Tbilisi on Sunday, Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, reiterated this position and said Russian forces should pull back immediately. She cautioned that foreign ministers from NATO countries would be watching the withdrawal on Tuesday at an emergency meeting in Brussels. The cease-fire accord agreed to by both sides allows Russia to conduct vaguely defined “security operations” outside the separatist regions where the conflict began, a point the Russians have cited as a justification for occupying a large swath of Georgian territory. At the checkpoint nearest Tbilisi, about 25 miles away, Russian soldiers were carrying round river rocks and stacking them in tires to form a barricade across the road. One soldier, shirtless in the heat, took a break and crouched near a pond, splashing the back of his neck with water. On the Tbilisi-Gori highway, Russian soldiers showed no signs of pulling back Monday. They lounged on their tanks, slept in the shade of trees beside the road or were apparently busy improving their fighting positions.

Outside the village of Natsreti, soldiers used a small, white front loader to pile dirt beside the road in front of a tank; the gun poked just over the top, aimed at the road. Beside the road, soldiers sat in the shade under the awnings of bus stops, eating rations. The road between Tbilisi and Gori runs 45 miles along the southern rim of an agricultural valley, framed by ridges of the Caucasus Mountains, with many small villages dotting the plain. Along the road were patches of fields and trees burned by fire started in the fighting. Outside one village, a number of Russian tanks and trucks were parked in a field on Monday. Through binoculars, more tanks were visible out on the plain, parked behind tree lines and below the crests of small hills. At their checkpoints, the Russian soldiers cast aside green plastic bags of military rations, including pouches of sugar, applesauce and tea bags all marked with a small red star. From the checkpoint at the entrance to Gori, explosions could be heard Monday reverberating through the city from time to time; their origin was unclear. Through the day, armored personnel carriers and fuel trucks rolled both ways along the highway, toward Tbilisi and back again, with no apparent purpose. Meanwhile, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe stressed the need for more international monitors. The organization has proposed increasing the number of monitors up to 100 as soon as possible. Efforts to finalize the arrangements for such a deployment are under way in Vienna. Journalists witnessed a prisoner exchange Tuesday of 15 Georgians for 12 Russians in Igoeti. Several people were unloaded from Russian helicopters and carried out on stretchers, Reuters reported. One of the prisoners exchanged was a Russian pilot shot down by Georgian forces, the report said.

Source: http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?o...6193&Itemid=65

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Russia Seems to Be Hunkering Down in Georgia

GORI, Georgia — Russia claimed that it had begun withdrawing its troops from Georgia on Monday, but there was little evidence of it on the ground: Russian soldiers continued digging in to positions along the highway approaching the capital, Tbilisi, showing no sign of pulling back from the severest confrontation between Russia and the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Along one major road, four Russian armored personnel carriers rattled a few miles closer to the capital, then plowed through parked police cars blocking the way as Georgian police officers stood by in helpless dismay. Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said his nation’s forces would begin a withdrawal on Monday to comply with a six-point peace accord signed by both sides over the weekend. Mr. Medvedev did not specify the pace or scope of the withdrawal, saying only that troops would withdraw to South Ossetia and a so-called security zone on its periphery.

In Moscow on Monday, Russia’s state news agency, the Russian Information Agency, reported that one of its correspondents saw small convoys of 5 to 10 tanks moving north through the Roki tunnel toward Russia through the day. But in Washington, Defense Department and military officials said there was no evidence of Russian forces’ complying with pledges to pull back. “We have not seen any significant Russian movement out of Georgia today,” said one senior Pentagon official. On the ground in Georgia, about 25 miles outside the capital along the main highway, the four Russian armored personnel carriers passed the Russian checkpoint at Igoeti and headed in the other direction, toward Tbilisi. Soldiers were piled on top, cradling Kalashnikov rifles. As they drove by, one old man, Koba Gurnashvili, stepped into the road and yelled at them, “Where do you think you’re going!” One of the soldiers yelled back, “To Tbilisi.” But they did not, instead turning up a side road leading to a village near the border with South Ossetia. They stopped at an intersection blocked by Georgian police cars.

The Russian commander climbed off his tank and began arguing with the Georgian police officers. He said he had orders to move up the road; a Georgian officer said he had orders to remain on the road, and asked to call his superiors for guidance. The Russian said, “You have three minutes to move your cars.” The two argued for a few minutes more. Then the police officers stepped away from their cars, stone-faced, with their keys. The tank smashed aside the cars and kept going. At the entrance to the central city of Gori, which has been in Russian hands for days, Russian soldiers sat on armored personnel carriers, smoking or napping in the heat of the afternoon. Soldiers held the main bridge and the military base, and were running checkpoints on the roads. Convoys were shuttling to Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Some soldiers, grubby after days in the field, were swimming naked in rivers. “They are not moving,” said Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgia’s reintegration minister. He said an attempt at a prisoner exchange on Monday fell through because Georgian officials suspected that Russia was not providing a complete list of prisoners. The Russian military said that the Georgians had introduced unspecified political demands in the prisoner exchange negotiation.

In Crawford, Tex., where President Bush is vacationing, a White House spokesman said that the United States was closely watching whether Russia honored its agreement to withdraw. The spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said it was too soon to say whether the Russians were in compliance. But he said that any military equipment or forces sent into the region during the fighting needed to be withdrawn under the cease-fire agreement. “If it rolled in after Aug. 6, it needs to roll out,” Mr. Johndroe told reporters, referring to the day before the conflict started. Mr. Medvedev on Monday cautioned that any force used against these soldiers would provoke a response. “Obviously, if anyone thinks he can kill our citizens, our soldiers and officers who are serving as peacekeepers, and go unpunished, we will never allow this,” Mr. Medvedev said. “Anyone who tries this will receive a devastating response. For this, we have all the means — economic and political and military. If anyone had illusions about this some time ago, then they must part with those illusions now.”

He added: “We do not want to aggravate the situation, but we want to be respected, and our government to be respected, and our people to be respected, and our values.” France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who brokered the deal, has clarified that it does not allow Russia to block the main highway, or for Russian soldiers to occupy the strategically important central city of Gori, astride the east-west highway; nonetheless, tanks were on the highway on Monday. On a visit to Tbilisi on Sunday, Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, reiterated this position and said Russian forces should pull back immediately. She cautioned that foreign ministers from NATO countries would be watching the withdrawal on Tuesday at an emergency meeting in Brussels. The cease-fire accord agreed to by both sides allows Russia to conduct vaguely defined “security operations” outside the separatist regions where the conflict began, a point the Russians have cited as a justification for occupying a large swath of Georgian territory. At the checkpoint nearest Tbilisi, about 25 miles away, Russian soldiers were carrying round river rocks and stacking them in tires to form a barricade across the road. One soldier, shirtless in the heat, took a break and crouched near a pond, splashing the back of his neck with water. On the Tbilisi-Gori highway, Russian soldiers showed no signs of pulling back. They lounged on their tanks, slept in the shade of trees beside the road or were apparently busy improving their fighting positions. Outside the village of Natsreti, soldiers used a small, white front loader to pile dirt beside the road in front of a tank; the gun poked just over the top, aimed at the road.

Beside the road, soldiers sat in the shade under the awnings of bus stops, eating rations. The road between Tbilisi and Gori runs 45 miles along the southern rim of an agricultural valley, framed by ridges of the Caucasus Mountains, with many small villages dotting the plain. Along the road were patches of fields and trees immolated by fire started in the fighting. Outside one village, a number of Russian tanks and trucks were parked in a field on Monday. Through binoculars, more tanks were visible out on the plain, parked behind tree lines and below the crests of small hills. At their checkpoints, the Russian soldiers cast aside green plastic bags of military rations, including pouches of sugar, applesauce and tea bags all marked with a small red star. From the checkpoint at the entrance to Gori, explosions could be heard reverberating through the city from time to time; their origin was unclear. Through the day, armored personnel carriers and fuel trucks rolled both ways along the highway, toward Tbilisi and back again, with no apparent purpose. Meanwhile, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe stressed the need for more international monitors. The organization has proposed increasing the number of monitors up to 100 as soon as possible. Efforts to finalize the arrangements for such a deployment are under way in Vienna.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/wo...19georgia.html

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Azerbaijan, Georgia: BP's Export Options Narrow Again

Summary

Oil firm BP announced Aug. 18 it had halted oil exports from Azerbaijan through Georgia by railway, following claims that Russia had bombed the rail lines west of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Along with the shutdown of two major oil pipelines, this interruption means BP will have no choice but to ship its oil through Russia. The Kremlin is undoubtedly pleased.

Analysis

Oil supermajor BP announced Aug. 16 that it had stopped shipping oil from its offshore production sites in Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea via Georgian railways. A bridge on this rail line has been severely damaged just 28 miles west of Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, at a point before the rail splits into three branches heading for the Black Sea coast. Georgia claims the Russians bombed out the bridge, but Moscow vehemently denies having done so. Repairs on the railroad are expected to take only 10 days, and a parallel unidirectional line could allow shipments to resume even sooner — but in the meantime, BP and Azerbaijan have reduced production in their Caspian oil fields to 250,000 barrels per day (bpd), less than one-third of the 800,000 bpd average. BP recently has suffered a series of setbacks, as the primary export routes for Azeri crude have been shut down one by one. For the moment, the only remaining option for BP and Azerbaijan to send their oil to market lies through Russian territory. The trouble began Aug. 5 when a fire erupted on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, which carries 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Azerbaijan’s capital to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. The fire, which occurred at Refahiye on the Turkish section of the line, lasted until Aug. 11. Repairs could take another four weeks, and meanwhile the line will remain defunct. The militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for the fire, but Turkish operator Botas denied the claim.

After the BTC rupture, BP and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic still had non-Russian alternatives to export reduced amounts of Caspian oil: the newly repaired Baku-Supsa oil pipeline and a railway from Baku to three Georgian Black Sea ports, including Batumi and Poti. There was also third option — a pipeline from Baku to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk — but that was seen as a last resort because the whole intent behind the BTC pipeline was to avoid Russian territory for political reasons. Then conflict broke out in Georgia and Russia invaded. In response to the war, BP turned off the valves on the Baku-Supsa line and the South Caucasus Pipeline, which carries natural gas. It also stopped operations at the Shah Deniz natural gas field off Azerbaijan’s coast. BP and its Azeri partners did not know what to make of the war, or how to proceed with oil exports through Georgian territory. With the pipelines shut down, BP relied on the Baku-Batumi railway for transport, with a capacity of about 70,000 barrels per day — but now that, too, has become unusable. While the railroad remains under repair, BP’s sole means of getting its Azeri crude to market lies through the 100,000 bpd pipeline leading to the Russian port of Novorossiysk. This amount is a small proportion of Azeri output, but it is better than nothing. Still, the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline is a humiliating last resort for both Baku and BP. Azerbaijan emphatically does not want to return to dependence on Russian infrastructure for its energy exports (with the high fees and political costs that dependence entails).

Meanwhile, BP will have to swallow its pride as it seeks help from the Russians in transporting its oil. The company’s relations with Moscow have already gone sour of late, amid attempts by the Kremlin’s energy champion Gazprom to take over BP’s assets in the joint venture TNK-BP. With the shutdown of Georgian export routes, Russia has dealt an enormously costly blow to BP at the height of the squabble over TNK-BP’s assets. Most importantly, Russia has come closer to redirecting the flows of oil from the Caspian Sea back onto its own territory for the near future. Even if the Georgians can technically get the rail line up and running, or make use of a parallel one-way line, they will need Russia’s tacit approval to continue with business as usual. The pipeline to Novorossiysk still offers the best route for exports, given BTC’s problems and the shutdown of the Baku-Supsa line. Moscow’s success in gaining control over oil distribution in the Caucasus is one of the biggest perks of its military actions in Georgia last week. Regardless of Russia’s military withdrawal, Moscow will dictate the terms under which oil exports from Azerbaijan resume.

Source: http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/aze...s_narrow_again

Paul Goble's Window on Eurasia - August 18, 2008

Moscow Expert Admits Russian Interest in Blocking Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline

A leading Moscow State University expert on the post-Soviet states argues that the Russian Federation’s main goals in Georgia did not include blocking the flow of oil through the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, but she says that “the possibility cannot be excluded” that Moscow was pursuing “other goals” including that. In an interview to MGU’s Information-Analytic Center on the CIS countries, Natalya Kharitonova, the general director of that body, said that “considering the love” Russian and Western experts have for focusing on energy issues, “one ought to have expected” that there would be a discussion of oil in the Georgian conflict. Many experts, she points out, connected the August 6 PKK attack on the pipeline which stopped the flow of oil and the beginning of the military conflict, with some of them implying if not saying outright that either the one led to the other or that the two together were part of a general plan to force Azerbaijan to seek alternative routes for the export of its oil.

“Baku, forced to significantly reduce the pumping of oil, immediately stopped using the Baku-Batumi and Baku-Kulevi rail lines again in connect with military actions in Georgia.” The Baku-Supsa line had already been stopped for “technical reasons,” Kharitonova says, but “in official versions are being invoked almost exclusively political reasons.” Now as a result, Azerbaijani hydrocarbons are flowing through Russian territory on the Baku-Novorossiisk line, but because Baku can export only 7 to 8 percent as much via this pipeline as via Baku-Ceyhan, she added, “Turkey intends to buy additional supplies from Russia and Iran” to compensate. Not surprisingly, given the impact all this is having on both the economic well-being and geopolitical relations in the region, the Moscow scholar says, Tbilisi has accused the Russian government of planning to disrupt such flows as part of its military effort, although such suggestions have been dismissed by Russian and Western specialists.

But now other explanations are springing up. Some, Kharitonova notes, are saying that the disruption was the “work of Georgian provocateurs” who were looking for something to blame Russia that would attract the attention of the West, while others are saying this is yet another effort to disrupt the NABUCCO program. Most of those making these suggestions, however, offer little or no evidence to back up their claims, but the Moscow specialist points out that there are two obvious things going on. On the one hand, Iran is getting more active and is now talking about building a Neka-Dzhask pipeline to compete with Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and thereby increase Tehran’s influence. And on the other, Russia has two clear motives for an interest in the stopping of the BTC pipeline.

First of all, it has never wanted to see the construction and operation of oil and gas pipelines that bypass Russian territory. And second, it has an interest in “forcing Western countries to put pressure on Georgia” to draw back so that the oil can flow. “There are a large number of versions” of why this has happened, Kharitonova notes, and she “suggests that one ought not to ignore any of them,” although she adds that it would be a mistake to fail to see that what has happened in Georgia and with the BTC may be nothing more than “a simple coincidence.” But she ends by acknowledging that “there are too many interests” intersecting in this part of the world to ignore the ways in which those who produce oil, those who transport it and those who consume it are in geopolitical competition. Indeed, she says, it is time to talk about “geo-economics” when it comes to oil, gas and politics in the Caucasus.

Source: http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?o...6183&Itemid=65

[Federate]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Russia moves SS-21 missiles into Georgia: US defense official

Are these SS-21s really effective or are they making the headlines more so because of their range (Tiflis)? Because the baboons have SS-21s in their arsenal as well...

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Are these SS-21s really effective or are they making the headlines more so because of their range (Tiflis)? Because the baboons have SS-21s in their arsenal as well...

The upgraded versions of ballistic missile system in question is supposed to be state-of-the-art. However, Russia can bomb any target in Georgia, at will, using a wide array of effective weapons systems. Thus deploying these particular missile systems in Georgia is senseless, from a militarily perspective; especially now that the Georgian army has been utterly smashed. If this report is true, than it is very probable that the deployment of the nuclear capable missile in Georgia was intended more as a political statement against the West's anti missile defense shield. Moreover, Baku does 'not' posses the upgraded versions of the SS-21, the longer range Iskander SS-23 or its more advanced variant, the SS-26.

More on the SS-21/SS-23/SS-26:

ISKANDER-E: Missile System Of The 21st Century

SRBM Iskander-M (SS-26 Stone): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xpAM...eature=related

The Kolomna Engineering Design Bureau is the leading developer of precision-guided tactical and theater missiles for the Ground Forces. In creative cooperation with leading research and design organizations and plants of the defense industry as well as the Defense Ministry Research Institute, the KBM Engineering Design Bureau has created a number of missile systems (division-level Tochka (SS-21) with a range of up to 70 km, army-level Oka (SS-23) with a range of up to 400 km, corps-level Tochka-U with a range of up to 120 km) that superseded the first generation missile systems of the Ground Forces (9K72 with 8K14-1 liquid-propellant missile, 9K52 with the 9M21unguided solid-propellant missile,ensuring effective engagement only if nuclear-tipped). The particular features of the aforementioned systems are: high accuracy of fire, a short time of readiness for launch, independence of combat assets, a high degree of prelaunch preparation automation and sufficiently high effectiveness of conventional warheads. That was evidently the reason to include the Oka missile system in the Soviet-American treaty on the elimination of their intermediate range and shorter range missiles, although its maximum guaranteed range was only 400 km. The conclusion of the 1987 INF Treaty and the decision not to use theater nuclear weapons set a number of principally new requirements for modern missile systems:

- use of non-nuclear destruction weapons only;

- precise accuracy of fire;

- control throughout the entire flight path;

- broad range of effective warheads;

- availability of battle management automation and information support systems, including preparation of standard information for correction and terminal guidance systems;

- possibility of integration into global satellite navigation systems (GSNSs), such as GLONASS and NAVSTAR;

- ability to engage hardened targets;

- increase in the number of engaged targets per unit of time;

- ability to penetrate air and missile defenses;

- capability to engage moving targets.

To meet the above requirements, the KBM Engineering Design Bureau has created the Iskander-E missile system. The Iskander-E missile system has embodied the best scientific, technical and design achievements in the field of theater missile systems; in terms of its design and high combat effectiveness it is an absolutely new-generation weapon which outperforms existing Scud-B, Tochka-U, Lance, ATACMS, Pluto and other missile systems.

The Iskander-E missile system is designed to engage:

- hostile fire weapons (SAM and missile batteries);

- fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft at parking areas;

- air and missile defense facilities;

- command posts and communications nodes;

- vital pinpoint and area targets;

- critical civilian facilities.

Owing to the implementation of terminal control and guidance methods, control throughout the entire flight path, a broad range of powerful warheads and integration of the onboard control system with various correction and homing systems as well as a high probability of combat mission accomplishment in heavy hostile jamming environments, type targets are engaged by one or two Iskander-E missiles, which in terms of effectiveness is equivalent to the use of a nuclear munition. For the first time in the world a missile system with a firing range not exceeding 300 km is capable of accomplishing all combat missions using conventional warheads and having two missiles on a launcher, which substantially increases the fire power potential of missile units.

Iskander-E missile system's features ensure:

- highly precise and effective engagement of various types of targets;

- possibility of concealed preparation, combat duty and delivery of effective missile strikes;

- automatic computation and input of a missile flying mission by the launcher devices;

- high probability of combat mission accomplishment in heavy hostile jamming environments;

- high probability of trouble-free missile operation during launch preparation and in flight;

- high tactical maneuverability due to cross-country combat vehicles mounted on all-wheel drive, chassis, and strategic mobility owing to transportability of the missile system by all types of transport facilities, including transport aircraft;

- automation of missile unit battle management, immediate processing of intelligence data and their dissemination to appropriate command levels;

- long service life and ease of operation.

In terms of performance characteristics, the Iskander-E missile fully complies with the provisions of the missile technology non-proliferation agreement. This is a deterrent weapon for local conflicts and a strategic weapon for countries with limited living space. A long firing range, permitting the use of the system from the depth of own troops location, and a short time of stay on a launch site make the system virtually invulnerable to conventional destruction weapons. The research conducted by specialists of leading Russian military research centers has demonstrated that in terms of the effectiveness-cost ratio the Iskander-E missile system outperforms the best foreign counterparts by five to eight times.

The system structure, its control systems, automated battle management and information support make it possible to promptly meet to new requirements without substantial modification of combat assets and, as a result, to guarantee a long lifespan. Provision is made for the modernization of the Iskander-E system to improve the accuracy of missile strike, reduce missile expenditure to one piece per target and adapt the system to the transportation and electronic facilities of a potential customer. Continuous (or periodic) maintenance of system components by highly qualified Russian specialists is also possible.

The composition of the missile system makes it possible to ensure the full cycle of its combat employment, including battle management, information support, maintenance, and crew training, without additional expenditures. The composition can be specified in a contract in compliance with customer's requirements. In addition, at foreign customer' request, missiles can be outfitted with various warheads. In terms of the attained combat potential level, the Iskander-E missile system, which is at the final stage of flight tests, is unrivaled in the world and is a 21st century weapon.

Source: http://www.enemyforces.com/missiles/iskander.htm

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Russophobia: A Political Pathology

Why the new cold war with Russia?

No one ever believed the Americans' explanation of why they wanted to base interceptor missiles in Poland, of all places, some 20 years after the fall of the Soviet empire – not even the Americans. The idea, said Washington, is to defend the Poles against the alleged threat of an attack from… Iran, which has yet to exhibit any hostile intentions toward Warsaw, and in fact does not even possess the sort of missiles the new system is designed to intercept. Putin's pained response – "We are being told the anti-missile defense system is targeted against something that does not exist. Doesn't it seem funny to you, to say the least?" – showed signs of the sort of exasperation that reached a crescendo last week with the Russian counterstrike against Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia. Since Bill Clinton invaded the Balkans and severed Kosovo from the Yugoslav torso, the incredibly patient Russians had stoically endured years of abuse, insults, and increasingly open belligerence directed at the Kremlin. Yet still they tried to have normal relations with the West. The turning point was reached only recently, as the Americans defended the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and implicitly justified the murder of a dozen Russian soldiers, who were on a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping mission.

The War Party has had a hard-on for Putin ever since the run-up to our Iraq misadventure, when the Russian leader opposed the drive to war, tried to buy time for the Iraqis via the UN, and openly mocked the lies that rationalized the whole disaster. Back in the spring of 2003, when the hunt for those famed "weapons of mass destruction" was becoming too much of an embarrassment even for the coalition of the willingly duped, Putin let loose at a London press conference with Tony Blair: "Two weeks later they still have not been found. The question is, where is Saddam Hussein? Where are those weapons of mass destruction, if they were ever in existence? Is Saddam Hussein in a bunker sitting on cases containing weapons of mass destruction, preparing to blow the whole place up?" The Times of London described Blair as standing there "grim-faced." What a lovely sight it must have been! That alone, given the British temperament, is reason never to forgive the Russian leader, but Western animus directed at Putin predates the Iraq war, and is rooted in the Russian leader's personal character.

Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, gave the West an easy time of it. Continuously drunk throughout most of his reign, the formerly minor Communist apparatchik plunged his crisis-stricken nation – still reeling from the impact of the Communist implosion – into a crash program of what might be called Bizarro economics, with predictable results. Bizarro World, as you'll recall, is an alternate universe where all natural laws are inverted and common sense is turned on its head: up is down, right is left, and the winners of auctions are the lowest bidders, not – as in our world – the highest. This last example applies directly to what occurred under Yeltsin's regime, at his direction: "auctions" of property formerly owned by the government and/or the Communist Party were won by those with the most political influence at the court of Czar Boris, not necessarily those who bid highest. Yeltsin sold off the assets of the nation cheap, often to the lowest bidder; even more often there was only one bidder. This is how control of the national assets passed from the old Communist Party to the children of the old Communist Party elite, who were now "businessmen," albeit a lot closer in type to Al Capone than to Bill Gates.

Having seized control of much of the nation's industry – the oil sector, the banks, the electrical grid, the trade in aluminum, precious metals, and big item manufactured goods, like cars – these "oligarchs," as they came to be called, became powers unto themselves. Setting up their own regional and industry-wide fiefdoms, they allied themselves with various criminal gangs, thus acquiring an army of enforcers. As Yeltsin stumbled about in a stupor, this union of the oligarchs with the Russian Mafia established a center of power that quickly came to rival the Kremlin. The country was sinking into chaos when Yeltsin finally succumbed to the ravages of his vices. Before he bowed out, however, he had one more moment of glory. Yeltsin's first such moment marked the takeoff of his career as a politician, when he stood on the barricades in front of the Russian parliament and declared that the Soviet coup-plotters – who sought the overthrow of Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev – would not pass. This gesture propelled him into the presidency after Gorbachev's exit, forever after imbuing a weak leader – who presided over the most precipitous national decline seen since the sudden demise of the Aztecs – with an aura of patriotic heroism. The end of his career, too, was punctuated by Yeltsin rising to the occasion, and, in a moment of clear-eyed sobriety, actually serving the interests of his country, by designating Putin as his heir.

Perhaps it was Yeltsin's way of confessing and atoning for his crimes, because Putin immediately moved against the oligarchs, and this was his first great sin in Western eyes, the beginning of the long campaign to defame him as Stalin reborn. This, of course, is what those who want to keep Russia weak and properly compliant would say about any strong leader in the Kremlin. Yeltsin, surrounded by a host of American advisers and in a state of constant inebriation, was a pushover. Putin is anything but, and therein lies the real source of the bile directed at him by Western governments and their attendant elites, especially in the U.S. and Britain. The oligarchs found themselves hated in Russia as much as they were valorized in the Western press. With huge bank deposits overseas, where they stowed away most of their ill-gotten wealth, they fled Russia a few steps ahead of the law as their various acts of embezzlement, intimidation, and even murder were uncovered and prosecuted. Upon their arrival in the West – many fled to Britain, where they quickly gave sagging real estate values a big shot in the arm – they were hailed as brave political "dissidents" in the tradition of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. For the past decade or so they've been agitating for regime-change in Moscow, to which they dream of returning in triumph, regaining their "rightful" place at the pinnacle of power. The revival of the cold war is proving very useful to this crowd, which is behind much of the anti-Russian propaganda that has filled the airwaves for the past few years.

Economic factors also play a major role. The sudden resurgence of Russia on account of its status as a major oil producer has got the Americans and the Brits in a real lather, as their economies respectively plummet into the depths of what some are calling another Great Depression. Russia's prosperity sticks in their collective craw, and, in response, the Russophobes have developed an entirely novel theory of political economy, which is an outgrowth of the environmentalist fad and the extreme nationalism of our ruling elites. It is the absurd idea that any and all countries that depend on oil to generate the bulk of their national income are unnatural, inherently flawed, and even intrinsically aggressive and a threat to the security of the West. Oil-producing states are inclined, by their very nature, to authoritarianism, they argue, although somehow I don't think they mean the state of Texas. The Bizarro World "logic" of this new economic fallacy is based on the concept that oil is, somehow, not a commodity like any other, that it has some special status over and above all others, and yet this is clearly not the case. Oil – like wheat, cow's bellies, and platinum – is subject to market forces and is unevenly distributed geographically. The economic arrangements that go into the production, distribution, and sale of oil are not fundamentally different from those related to any other commodity, from bananas to high-grade steel. The U.S. has been a major oil producer, at least in the past, and that didn't distort or retard our economic and political development: quite the contrary, it fueled a new era of industrial and intellectual innovation, freeing the individual from the land and inaugurating a new era of political and economic liberalism.

Yet now we are told that oil is a curse that empowers tyrants, who can't be entrusted with such a precious commodity in any event. This is what is behind much of the buzz against Putin's Russia, flush with oil revenues, and the real source of friction between the Kremlin and the West. It is pure nonsense, economically, but, then again, like most war propaganda, it doesn't have to make sense; it only has to demonize the enemy from as many different angles as possible. Congruent with this oil-as-the-root-of-illiberalism thesis is the idea that the Russians and the Chinese, along with their clients and allies, constitute a new pole of ideological attraction, in opposition to the liberal democracy of the West. In true Bizarro World style, this gets it completely wrong. Looked at in terms of the last hundred years, or so, it is Russia – which threw off the yoke of the most oppressive regime in modern times – that is moving in the direction of freedom, and the West – where the surveillance state is a fact of modern life, and that document known as the U.S. Constitution is just a scrap of paper – that is moving toward authoritarian rule. As for China, it has progressed from the Cultural Revolution to the Beijing Olympics in less than the historical blink of an eye.

The U.S. and its allies in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus seem determined to provoke the Russian bear into a confrontation, and the crisis over South Ossetia is just the beginning. As I have warned in this space for what seems like an eternity, a new cold war between the U.S. and Russia is a project dear to the War Party's heart – and it seems to have come to full fruition in the past week or so. The War Party never sleeps – they've always got a new angle up their sleeves, a new "Hitler" who must be crushed in the name of democracy and decency, and against whom all the resources of the West must be mobilized – until a new enemy is found. The latest such enemy is Putin's Russia, specifically, Putin himself, who is now being characterized as a hybrid monster, an authoritarian admixture of Hitler and Stalin. Aside from an upsurge in the profits reaped by the makers of armaments, the revival of the cold war also means that the Kremlinologists of old will be back in fashion in Washington – and that all those doctoral dissertations on the history of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party were not written in vain. The cold war wasn't just an era, it was also an entire industry, consisting of high-level policy wonks, professional anti-Communists and domestic subversive-hunters, as well as the military-industrial complex, which generously subsidized the activities of the former. This whole network collapsed, along with international communism, back in the 1990s, but anti-Putinism will bring it back to life, thus providing employment for a certain narrow segment of the population, even if the rest of us are selling pencils in the streets.

The Western media is in truly high dudgeon, these days, inveighing against Putin and newly "authoritarian" Russia, but this narrative is belied by the facts. As one analyst writing on the blog of the Foreign Policy Association put it: "What is troubling is the U.S. media's willingness to similarly toe the party line, but in the absence of any of the coercive measures, such as the state censorship, that the Russian press endures. There have been no William Dunbars on CNN, despite the fact that every report I've seen on the channel yesterday had been framed as 'Russian invasion,' with endless clips of Saakashvili alleging Russian crimes, etc., in a loop of totally pro-Georgian coverage. Georgia is a key U.S. ally, the 3rd largest troop contingent in Iraq, and occupies a strategic, oil rich zone. The self-policing in the U.S. media, which has basically been uncritically promoting government talking points, is very disturbing. " Go read the whole piece, which is unsigned. It's about how the Russian and Western media combines reported two entirely different wars, which had very little to do with one another.

One explanation is that with Russia moving toward more freedom, in fits and starts, and we in the West moving toward much less, we're converging somewhere in midstream. Indeed, one could make the case that the Americans and their British counterparts are too well-trained to go off-message, while in Russia they still have to be constrained by formal rules and regulations. Official censorship simply isn't necessary in the West, because everyone knows what to say – and, more importantly, what not to say. Yes, it's disturbing, but at least from my vantage point, not all that surprising. Ever since 9/11, and even predating that signal event, we've been headed in this direction, with the media (in alliance with demagogic politicians) policing not only itself but the entire society to make sure no pockets of dissent exist. Which brings me back, as has been the case for the past week or so, to the subject of Antiwar.com's survival. Yes, we're in the midst of our end-of-summer fundraising campaign, and we're having a rough time of it. I'm not surprised. Times are bad economically, for most of us, and charitable contributions are down across the board. Which is all the more reason why it's so important that you make your contribution, and make it today: our creditors are knocking on the door, and the challenges we face, in this new era of a revived cold war, are all the more onerous. The prospects for peace look darker than ever, a fact that only underscores the importance of our work and the continuity of this Web site.

[...]

Source: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13317

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

One of the few sane voices left in American politics...

Blowback From Bear-Baiting

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships. Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours. Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi, and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin. Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, xxxx Cheney, and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli. Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear. American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight – Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush. True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"? Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi? Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing? When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of whom viscerally detest Russia? That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany. When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do? American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.

Bush, Cheney, and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet. When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia? The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an antimissile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand. We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus. Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow. How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior? For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost – in Tbilisi.

Source: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28053

Who Started Cold War II?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO. Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow's superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis. If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war. From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly. Truman refused to use force to break Stalin's Berlin blockade. Ike refused to intervene when the Butcher of Budapest drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. LBJ sat impotent as Leonid Brezhnev's tanks crushed the Prague Spring. Jimmy Carter's response to Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Moscow Olympics. When Brezhnev ordered his Warsaw satraps to crush Solidarity and shot down a South Korean airliner killing scores of U.S. citizens, including a congressman, Reagan did – nothing.

These presidents were not cowards. They simply would not go to war when no vital U.S. interest was at risk to justify a war. Yet, had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians. The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad. Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far. And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire? As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West? For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to Moscow. If Cold War II is coming, who started it, if not us?

The swift and decisive action of Putin's army in running the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia in 24 hours after Saakashvili began his barrage and invasion suggests Putin knew exactly what Saakashvili was up to and dropped the hammer on him. What did we know? Did we know Georgia was about to walk into Putin's trap? Did we not see the Russians lying in wait north of the border? Did we give Saakashvili a green light? Joe Biden ought to be conducting public hearings on who caused this U.S. humiliation. The war in Georgia has exposed the dangerous overextension of U.S. power. There is no way America can fight a war with Russia in the Caucasus with our army tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor should we. Hence, it is demented to be offering, as John McCain and Barack Obama are, NATO membership to Tbilisi. The United States must decide whether it wants a partner in a flawed Russia or a second Cold War. For if we want another Cold War, we are, by cutting Russia out of the oil of the Caspian and pushing NATO into her face, going about it exactly the right way.

Vladimir Putin is no Stalin. He is a nationalist determined, as ruler of a proud and powerful country, to assert his nation's primacy in its own sphere, just as U.S. presidents from James Monroe to Bush have done on our side of the Atlantic. A resurgent Russia is no threat to any vital interests of the United States. It is a threat to an American Empire that presumes some God-given right to plant U.S. military power in the backyard or on the front porch of Mother Russia. Who rules Abkhazia and South Ossetia is none of our business. And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe? As for Saakashvili, he's probably toast in Tbilisi after this stunt. Let the neocons find him an endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

Source: http://antiwar.com/pat/index_pat.html

And this commentary from early this year:

Should We Fight for South Ossetia?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

In an echo of Warren Harding's "A Return to Normalcy" speech of 1920, George Bush last week declared, "Normalcy is returning back to Iraq." The term seemed a mite ironic. For, as Bush spoke, Iraqis were dying in the hundreds in the bloodiest fighting in months in Basra, the Shia militias of Moqtada al-Sadr were engaging Iraqi and U.S. troops in Sadr City, and mortar shells were dropping into the Green Zone. One begins to understand why Gen. Petraeus wants a "pause" in the pullout of U.S. forces, and why Bush agrees. This will leave more U.S. troops in Iraq on Inauguration Day 2009 than on Election Day 2006, when the country voted the Democrats into power to bring a swift end to the war. A day before Bush went to the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, to speak of normalcy returning to Iraq, he was led down into "the Tank," a secure room at the Pentagon, to be briefed on the crisis facing the U.S. Army and Marine Corps because of the constant redeployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

As the Associated Press' Robert Burns reported, the Joint Chiefs "laid out their concerns about the health of the U.S. force." First among them is "that U.S. forces are being worn thin, compromising the Pentagon's ability to handle crises elsewhere in the world. … The U.S. has about 31,000 troops in Afghanistan and 156,000 in Iraq." "Five plus years in Iraq," the generals and admirals told Bush, "could create severe, long-term problems, particularly for the Army and Marine Corps." In short, the two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are wearing down U.S. ground forces of fewer than 700,000, one in every six of them women, to such an extent U.S. commanders called Bush and xxxx Cheney to a secret meeting to awaken them to the strategic and morale crisis. This is serious business. With the Taliban revived and the violence in Iraq rising toward pre-surge levels, the Joint Chiefs are telling the commander in chief that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are worn out.

Crunch time is coming. And what is President Bush doing? He is flying to Bucharest, Romania, to persuade Europe to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which means a U.S. commitment to treat any Russian attack on Kiev or Tbilisi like an attack on Kansas or Texas. Article V of the NATO treaty declares that "an armed attack against one or more [allies] shall be considered an attack against them all." Added language makes clear that the commitment to assist an ally is not unconditional. Rather, each signatory will assist the ally under attack with "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force." Yet, it was understood during the Cold War that if a NATO ally like Norway, West Germany, or Turkey, which bordered on the Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact, were attacked, America would come to its defense.

Can any sane man believe the United States should go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia over Stalin's birthplace, Georgia? Two provinces of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, have seceded, with the backing of Russia. And there are 10 million Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east of that country, and Moscow and Kiev are at odds over which is sovereign on the Crimean Peninsula. To bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO would put America in the middle of these quarrels. We could be dragged into a confrontation with Russia over Abkhazia, or South Ossetia, or who owns Sebastopol. To bring these ex-republics of the Soviet Union into NATO would be an affront to Moscow not unlike 19th century Britain bringing the Confederate state of South Carolina under the protection of the British Empire.

How would Lincoln's Union have reacted to that? With a weary army and no NATO ally willing to fight beside us, how could we defend Georgia if Tbilisi, once in NATO, defied Moscow and invaded Abkhazia and South Ossetia – and Russia bombed the Georgian army and capital? Would we declare war? Would we send the 82nd Airborne into the Pankisi Gorge? Fortunately, Germany is prepared to veto any Bush attempt to put Ukraine or Georgia on a fast track into NATO. But President Bush is no longer the problem. John McCain is.

[...]

Source: http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=12612

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Saakashvili confronting Russians last year: ...immediately get your people out of here our patience is finished. We have ordered our military to defend with all possible means and resources and as you are aware we have resources...

Russia's strained relations with Georgia (video report from Al-Jazeera): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZtIjN78T4A

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Nato offers scant comfort for Georgia over conflict with Russia

Major divisions opened up between Nato members as European countries rejected an American proposal to suspend ties with Russia over its actions in Georgia.

The differences at an emergency summit in Brussels offered scant comfort for Georgia, which had hoped that its bid for Nato membership would be expedited. While the alliance agreed to create a Nato-Georgia Commission which will support the country's economic recovery, there was no mention of speeding up the membership process. The summit was expected to present a united front against what Western countries say has been an act of unconscionable aggression against an important ally. The United States had called for a formal suspension of ministerial meetings with Moscow by Nato countries, but European members made clear they favoured a much milder approach and issued a .

Even Britain, which has been broadly supportive of Washington's robust condemnation of the Kremlin, chose to side with the Europeans in rejecting a proposal to freeze the Nato-Russia council, established in 2002 to boost relations between Moscow and the West. "I am not one that believes that isolating Russia is the right answer to its misdemeanours," said David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary. "I think the right answer is hard-headed dialogue." Mr Miliband arrived in Georgia later to express Britain's support for the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili. With France and Germany, heavily dependent on Russian energy, urging caution and Italy broadly supporting the Kremlin's actions, Nato issued a watered down statement expressing "grave concern".

It told Russia that meetings could not take place while its troops remained in Georgia and said that relations could be damaged if a pull-out did not begin quickly. "The Alliance is considering seriously the implications of Russia's actions for the Nato-Russian relationship," the statement read. "We have determined that we cannot continue with business as usual." The meeting prompted a mixture of scorn and outrage in Moscow, which continued to defy international calls for a full military withdrawal from Georgia. Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, derided the summit as a "mountain that gave birth to a mouse". "All of these threats that have been raining down on Russia turned out to be empty words," he said. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, accused Nato of protecting a "criminal regime".

Russia also pulled out of a Nato exercise in the Baltic Sea and cancelled a visit by a US naval frigate to the Kamchatka peninsula. Some progress in alleviating the crisis was briefly visible after Georgia and Russia completed a prisoner-swap yesterday morning. But an hour later, Russian troops smashed their way into the port of Poti, on Georgia's Black Sea post. After blowing up the missile boat Dioskuria, the Georgian navy's most sophisticated vessel, the Russians seized 21 Georgian servicemen and took them prisoner. Blinded and handcuffed, the soldiers were then dragged to an unknown location. They also confiscated four American Humvees, used in a recent military exercise in Georgia, that were awaiting shipment back to the United States.

There was little visible evidence that a Russian withdrawal was underway, although officials in Moscow said it was and western correspondents were invited to see a small convoy of military vehicles leave the strategically important town of Gori. But nearby, Russian soldiers continued to build trenches and in other towns there were no signs of a drawdown of forces. Mr Lavrov, however, said that Russian troops could be pulled out of Georgia within three days although other officials refused to give a time frame. The UN Security Council was due to meet to discuss a new draft resolution calling for respect of Georgia's territorial integrity and the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...th-Russia.html

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev vows further retribution against Georgia

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev vows further retribution against Georgia Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, said Georgian actions would not go 'unpunished' as the United States accused Moscow of deploying short-range missiles to positions within range of the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

Amid few signs that the Kremlin was honouring its latest pledge to withdraw troops, Mr Medvedev also threatened to "crush" any other ex-Soviet states that attempted to follow Georgia's example by killing Russian citizens. For the first time since the conflict began 11 days ago, Mr Medvedev was allowed to stand in for Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, who has clearly been in charge of running Russia's war. Giving a passable imitation of his predecessor, the president - who has been given coaching to imitate Mr Putin's abrasive style - adopted an uncompromising position that appeared designed to defy the United States, which has solidly backed Georgia during the conflict.

"What the Georgian authorities did exceeded human understanding," he told troops at a Russian military base in Vladikavkaz, a city in the Caucasus close to the Georgian border. "Their actions cannot be explained and moreover must not go unpunished." Mr Medvedev gave no hint over what further retribution against Georgia he sought. Russia has already announced plans to launch a genocide investigation against the Georgian government, perhaps with the view to bringing war crimes charges against President Mikheil Saakashvili. Meanwhile, Pentagon officials confirmed Russia had deployed short-range SS-21 missiles inside the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, a move that is likely to unnerve Mr Saakashvili's government and undermine the already fragile ceasefire. The SS-21 was used with devastating consequences during Russia's military campaign against separatist rebels in Chechnya.

Russia claimed it had begun to pull its troops out of undisputed Georgian territory, but if it was doing so the withdrawal seemed more cosmetic than substantial. An American defence official said that Russia was actually sending more troops to South Ossetia and another pro-Russian enclave in Abkhazia. "We're seeing them solidify their positions," the official was quoted as saying. At a road junction 25 miles from Tbilisi, a confrontation brewed between Georgian policemen and Russian soldiers intent on entrenching themselves in new positions close to the capital. A Russian commander broke the impasse by ordering the column of personnel carriers that he was leading to plough their way through two police cars blocking the track in front of them. Asked where they were going, a Russian soldier on top of one of the carriers replied: "Tbilisi. Get your car out of the way before we crush it too." There was little sign of redeployment from other major towns like Kaspi, Zugdidi and Senaki that have fallen under effective Russian occupation. Six Russian checkpoints blocked the route to the strategic town of Gori where Russian officers prevented journalists from entering to monitor the withdrawal.

In recent days Gori has increasingly felt as though it has become part of Russia. Mobile phones set to roaming receive messages welcoming their owners to Russia, while car radios can pick up Russian radio stations but not Georgian ones. Despite US pleas to Mr Medvedev to keep his word after reneging on earlier promises to withdraw, there were further signs that Russia was preparing to bolster its forces in Georgia. A battalion of Russia's 76th Guards Airborne Division was moved from Pskov to Beslam, a few miles on the Russian side of the Georgian border. Several other battalions elsewhere in Russia have also been ordered to prepare for imminent deployment. Russia insisted a withdrawal had begun but gave no time frame as to when it could be completed. "I can only say we will not be leaving as fast as we came," said General Anatoly Nogovitsyn.

Mr Medvedev also sent an undisguised message to other ex-Soviet countries thinking of challenging Russia's authority. "If anyone thinks that they can kill our citizens and escape unpunished, we will never allow this," he said. "If anyone tries this again, we will come out with a crushing response. We have all the necessary resources, political, economic and military." Russia justified its invasion of Georgia in terms of defending its citizens of South Ossetia and Abkhazi - although it only gave Russian passports to the inhabitants of the two provinces five years ago. In the past week Ukrainian politicians have claimed that Russia has been doling out passports to residents of the Crimea, which has strong allegiances to Moscow, raising fears about the Kremlin's intentions in the region.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...t-Georgia.html