Tweet
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
Georgians ousted from Abkhazia entirely.
Georgians ousted from Abkhazia entirely.
-
-
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
Here is the official rebuke to Azerbaboon and Georgian claims that Russia used Armenia as a launchpad.
--------------
Armenia Rules Out Support For Russian Strikes On Georgia
Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian assured a senior Georgian diplomat on Tuesday Russia did not and will not use Armenian territory for its ongoing military operations in Georgia condemned by the West.
Armenia maintains close defense links with Russia and hosts a Russian military base numbering several thousand soldiers and a dozen MiG-29 fighter jets.
The Defense Ministry in Yerevan flatly denied late last week Azerbaijani and Georgian media claims that some of the Russian warplanes involved in bomb raids on Georgia flew in from Armenian military airfields. A ministry spokesman rejected the allegations as an Azerbaijani “provocation” designed to damage Georgian-Armenian relations. He argued that the Russian military is not using MiG-29s in the air strikes.
Georgia’s ambassador to Armenia, Revaz Gachechiladze, commented the allegations, not echoed by the Georgian government, at a meeting with Ohanian. A statement by the Defense Ministry quoted Gachechiladze as stating that the Russian military aircraft stationed in Armenia has not been involved in the Russian onslaught.
“For his part, S. Ohanian assured the ambassador that Armenia’s territory will not be used as a military launch pad for hostilities against Georgia, expressing hope that ways will be found to normalize the situation in Georgia,” the statement said. Ohanian also offered his sympathy for “innocent victims” of the nearly week-long fighting, it added.
The statement claimed that Gachechiladze requested the meeting in order to introduce Georgia’s new military attaché in Yerevan, Colonel Murtaz Gujejiani, to the Armenian defense chief.
Armenia is treading carefully on the Russian-Georgian conflict, mindful of the two countries’ importance for its national security. The Armenian Foreign Ministry expressed on Friday serious concern about the outbreak of fighting in South Ossetia but avoided blaming any of the parties for the worst regional crisis since the early 1990s. Official Yerevan has so far not reacted on Russian forces’ subsequent advance deep into Georgian territory, which has been condemned by the United States and other Western powers.
The Armenian government also refuted on Tuesday other media reports saying that it allowed a planeload of U.S. military instructors bound for Georgia to land in Yerevan’s Zvartnots international airport. Deputy Foreign Minister Gegham Gharibjanian said special flights to Zvartnots have been carried out only by planes that were sent by some European governments to collect their citizens evacuated from Georgia.
From http://www.armenialiberty.org/armeni...A153867578.ASPAzerbaboon: 9.000 Google hits and counting!Comment
-
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
Armenia ‘Unaffected’ By Georgia Crisis
Contradicting statements by Armenian diplomats and cargo firms, Transport and Communications Minister Gurgen Sargsian insisted on Tuesday that the Russian-Georgian military conflict has not disrupted Armenia’s main supply lines running across Georgia.
The assurances came amid growing signs of fuel shortages in the country. Some gasoline stations in Yerevan restricted sales of petrol, while others shut altogether. Fuel was reportedly in even shorter supply outside the capital.
Sargsian attributed this to an emerging “panic” among motorists who he said do not expect a quick end to the fighting in Georgia and are therefore anxious to stock up with fuel. “There are no grounds for panic,” he said. “We have sufficient stocks of fuel, and fuel imports are continuing. We have no rail cars filled fuel which have not reached Armenia.”
Fuel and the vast majority of other commodities reach the country via the Georgian Black Sea ports of Batumi and Poti. Russian warplanes have bombed Poti and other civilian and military targets across Georgia in recent days. According to some media reports, the air strikes disrupted Georgia’s rail-ferry services with Russia and Ukraine that process most of the goods shipped to and from Armenia.
Sargsian claimed, however, that both the ports and the ferry links have remained operational since last Friday’s outbreak of vicious fighting in South Ossetia that spilled over into Georgia proper. “We have no information about any problems,” he told a news conference. “Everything is normal. Georgian roads are not dangerous, and the railway [leading to Armenia] is absolutely safe.”
According to Sargsian, 60 rail cars laden with wheat and other basic goods rolled into Armenia overnight and 18 others are on the way. “Cargo shipments by rail are being carried out as planned,” the minister said. “The railway did not stop for a single minute. It has continued to operate, carrying both people and cargos.”
However, Armenia’s ambassador to Georgia, Hrach Silvanian, painted a different picture. “As a result of the bomb raids, there have arisen difficulties in the work of the port of Poti, which have reflected negatively on cargo shipments,” he said in written answers to questions from RFE/RL.
Silvanian also reported “certain disruptions” in Batumi partly related to concerns about the safety of freight transportation. The Armenian embassy in Tbilisi is taking “all possible steps to overcome the mentioned obstacles,” he said.
Gagik Aghajanian, executive director of the cargo firm Apaven, said the Poti port has stood idle “for three or four days,” resulting in a backlog of 250 cargo containers bound for Armenia. “Normally Armenia receives 55-60 containers a day,” he explained.
That Russia’s military operations in Georgia have seriously complicated Armenia’s transport communication with the rest of the world was also asserted by the country’s largest fuel importer, Flash. “There were disruptions in our supplies for the past four or five days as no cargos were transported from Georgia,” Mushegh Elchian, the company’s deputy director, told RFE/RL.
But Elchian said the situation seems to be improving now. “We received ten rail cars of petrol overnight, while other companies imported large quantities of diesel fuel. But still we have a fairly large volume of fuel stocked in the Batumi terminal.”
Elchian blamed the difficulties for his company’s extraordinary decision to introduce petrol rationing. He said Flash’s filling stations across Armenia were instructed on Monday to pump petrol only into car tanks and rebuff motorists with fuel canisters.
From http://www.armenialiberty.org/armeni...FD7FE4B53D.ASPAzerbaboon: 9.000 Google hits and counting!Comment
-
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
Armenian Exodus From Georgia Continues
Thousands of Armenian vacationers are continuing to hastily return home from Georgia amid the uncertain security situation in the country, the Foreign Ministry in Yerevan said on Tuesday.
A ministry statement said some 4,500 of them streamed back into Armenia in the past two days, raising to more than 11,000 the number of people evacuated from Georgian Black Sea resorts since the outbreak of the Russian-Georgian war.
There was no word on the number of Armenian citizens remaining in the area bordering Turkey. An estimated 50,000 of them spent their summer holidays there last year.
Armenia has also received scores of foreigners, most of them Western tourists, caught up in the bitter fighting. According to the Foreign Ministry, at least 750 of them crossed the Georgian-Armenian border on Monday and Tuesday alone.
The evacuees also included family members of U.S. diplomats and Peace Corps volunteers in Georgia. Citing the U.S. State Department, the Associated Press reported that more than 170 Americans left Georgia on Sunday and Monday in two convoys. The department has recommended that all U.S. citizens leave Georgia due to continued Russian bombing of civilian and military targets.
In a separate statement on Tuesday, the Armenian embassy in Tbilisi said nearly 3,300 Georgian citizens have found refuge in Armenia since the start of Russian military operations in their country. Most of them are presumably ethnic Armenians.
From http://www.armenialiberty.org/armeni...E79980F3BE.ASPAzerbaboon: 9.000 Google hits and counting!Comment
-
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
Russia masses naval force opposite Georgia’s third sensitive region, Ajaria
August 12, 2008, 11:41 PM (GMT+02:00)
Georgian president addresses mass rally in Tbilisi
While the world’s attention was fixed on the Russian-Georgian contest over two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military sources reveal that Russia has massed a fleet of warships and marine forces opposite the Gerogia's semi-autonomous Black Sea region of Ajaria.
Moscow is preparing to punish what it regards as Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili’s further provocations by occupying this coastal strip on Georgia’s southwestern border with Turkey.
The appearance of Ukraine’s president Viktor Yushchenko alongside Saakashvili, leaders of the pro-Western Orange and Rose Revolutions, at a huge national rally outside the Georgian parliament in Tbilisi Tuesday night, Aug. 12, may well be seen by the Kremlin as over the top. It came hours after Russian President Dimitry Medvedev’s gesture to the European mediation bid of ordering the Russian military operation in Georgia halted there and then.
Half of Ajaria’s ethnically Georgian population professes Islam, in contrast to the country’s Christian majority. The other half is Russian.
Ajarian has come to mean a Georgian Muslim.
The Russian Black Sea buildup is deployed opposite the Ajurian capital of Batumi, an important port for the shipment of oil from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Its oil refinery handles Caspian oil from Azerbaijan.
When Saakashvili was elected president five years ago, the region’s leaders refused to recognize his authority and maintained close ties with Moscow up until May 2004 when, after Ajurians demonstrated against Tbilisi, he ordered them to obey the Georgian constitution and disarm.
Russia maintained a military base at Batumi which it agreed to close by November 2007.
DEBKAfile’s sources report that by recovering the base, Moscow will not only punish the Georgian president, but also profit from the turmoil of the past week in three ways:
1. A third semi-autonomous province will be hacked off Georgian territory after the loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
2. Russia will gain a strategic Black Sea foothold at Turkey’s back door.
3. It will also control a gateway to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
From http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5505Azerbaboon: 9.000 Google hits and counting!Comment
-
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
Some Georgians already questioning their "president"
From Guardian:
Maybe he was thinking somebody would help us. But nobody did help us," Bacho Janashia, a 24-year-old student said. "We hope Saakashvili disappears from Georgia. He's a bastard."
The cost of Georgia's ill-fated adventure against Vladimir Putin was beginning to sink in. Many blamed Georgia's president Mikhail Saakashvili — querying why he had taken on mighty Moscow given Georgia's military inferiority and the improbability of US intervention.
"Saakashvili has to resign. There is no other way," Misha Iashvili said, stopping to mend his truck next to a roadside café. Its owners had gone, locking up and leaving behind their neat dahlia garden. He added: "Russia had been close to us for years. It will defend us. The US and Europe won't."
Saakashvilli just cannot think clearly. It seems like he has some mental problems...
President Saakashvili was forced to the ground by over-protective bodyguards during the visit of the French Foreign minister in Tbilisi on Monday. Note that the cameraman's hands didn't shake and he managed to film the panic outburst professionally.
Saakashvili welcomes the French and Finnish
foreign ministers at Tbilisi airport which was
earlier claimed to be 'ruined' by Russian
air forces. The nation's leader seems to be
enjoying himself while fighting is underway
just several kilometres away.
The President keeps looking up...
Suddenly, he seems to have detected
something in the sky, putting an end to the
improvised open air news conference.
Source -- http://www.russiatoday.com/features/news/28883
Comment
-
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
Doesn't matter -- irrelevant. Georgians are accurately represented by their leader.Some Georgians already questioning their "president"Comment
-
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
The Tbilisi lion crawls from under his rock
Comment
-
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
From BBC:
Refugees seek shelter in Russia
VIDEO -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7557547.stmComment
-
Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
Bush rebuking Russia? Putin must be splitting his sides
One thing is for sure. This week's operation in Georgia has displayed the failure of the west's policy of belligerence towards Vladimir Putin's Russia. The policy was meant to weaken Russia, and has strengthened it. The policy was meant to humiliate Russia with Nato encirclement, and has merely fed its neo-imperialism. The policy was meant to show that Russia "understands only firmness" and instead has shown the west as a bunch of tough-talking windbags.
Georgia, a supposed western ally and applicant to Nato, has been treated by Russia to a brutal lesson in power politics. The west has lost all leverage and can do nothing. Seldom was a policy so crashingly stupid.
Putin would die laughing if he read this week's American newspapers. The president, George Bush, declared the Russian invasion of Georgia "disproportionate and unacceptable". This is taken as a put-down to the vice-president, xxxx Cheney, who declared the invasion "will not go unanswered", apparently something quite different. Bush says that great powers should not go about "toppling governments in the 21st century", as if he had never done such a thing. Cheney says that the invasion has "damaged Russia's standing in the world", as if Cheney gave a damn. The lobby for sanctions against Russia is reduced to threatening to boycott the winter Olympics. Big deal.
Every student of the Caucasus has known since the fall of the Soviet empire that this part of the world was an explosion waiting to happen. The crisscrossing fault lines of ethnicity, religion and nationalism, fuelled by gas and oil, would not long survive the removal of the Red Army and communist discipline. There were too many old scores to settle, too much territory in dispute and too much wealth at stake - rivalries brilliantly portrayed in Kurban Said's classic novel of Edwardian Azerbaijan, Ali & Nino.
In every crisis the west craves goodies and baddies. The media finds it impossible to report a modern conflict without taking sides. In Yugoslavia, where a similar clash of separatist minorities occurred in the 1990s, coverage was so biased that Kosovo is still "plucky little" and the Serbs can still do no right.
In South Ossetia both sides appear to have committed appalling atrocities, and can thus generate a sense of outrage in front of whatever camera is pointed at them. Georgia's government claimed the right to assert military control over its two dissident provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, even if they were openly in league with Russia. Equally, Russia felt justified in stopping the consequent evictions and killings of its nationals in these provinces, in which it had a humanitarian locus as "peacekeeper".
The difficulty is that entitlement and good sense are rarely in accord. Georgia may have been entitled to act, but was clearly unwise to do so. Russia may have been entitled to aid its people against an oppressor, but that is different from unleashing its notoriously inept and ruthless army, let alone bombing Georgia's capital and demanding a change in its government.
What is clear is that the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, is a poor advertisement for a Harvard education.
He thought he could reoccupy South Ossetia and call Russia's bluff while Putin was away at the Olympics. He found it was not bluff. Putin was waiting for just such an invitation to humiliate a man he loathes, and to deter any other Russian border state from applying to join Nato, an organisation Russia had itself sought to join until it was rudely rebuffed.
Saakashvili thought he could call on the support of his neoconservative allies in Washington. Tbilisi is one of the few world cities in which Bush's picture is a pin-up and where an avenue is named after him. It turned out that such "support" was mere words. America is otherwise engaged in wars that bear a marked resemblance to those waged by Putin. It defended the Kurdish enclaves against Saddam Hussein. It sought regime change in Serbia and Afghanistan. As Putin's troops in South Ossetia were staging a passable imitation of the US 101st Airborne entering Iraq, Bush was studiously watching beach volleyball in Beijing.
The truth is that the world has no conceptual framework for adjudicating, let alone resolving, these timeless border conflicts. Where poverty is rife, it takes only a clan war and a ready supply of guns for hostilities to break out. The only question is how to stop them escalating.
Once such conflicts could be quarantined by the United Nations' requirement to respect national sovereignty. That has been shot to pieces by the liberal interventionism of George Bush and Tony Blair. The result has reinvigorated separatist movements across the world. Small-statism is not an evil in itself: witness its quadrennial festival at the Olympics. But the process of achieving it is usually bitter and bloody.
The west's eagerness to intervene in favour of partition, manifest in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Sudan, is more than meddling. It encouraged every oppressed people and province on earth to be "the mouse that roared", to think it could ensnare a great power in its cause.
The parallels are glaring. If we backed Kosovo against the Serbs, why not back South Ossetia against the Georgians? But if we backed the Kurds against the Iraqis, why not the Georgians against Russia? Indeed, had Nato admitted Georgia to full membership, there is no knowing what Caucasian horror might have ensued from the resulting treaty obligation. Decisions which in Washington and London may seem casual gestures of ideological solidarity can mean peace and war on the ground.
I retain an archaic belief that the old UN principle of non-interference, coupled with a realpolitik acceptance of "great power" spheres of influence, is still a roughly stable basis for international relations. It may on occasions be qualified by soft-power diplomacy and humanitarian relief. It may demand an abstinence from kneejerk gestures in favour of leaving things to sort themselves out (as in Zimbabwe). But liberal interventionism, especially when it leads to military and economic aggression, means one costly adventure after another - and usually failure.
The west has done everything to isolate Putin, as he rides the tiger of Russian emergence from everlasting dictatorship. This has encouraged him to care not a fig for world opinion. Equally the west has encouraged Saakashvili to taunt Putin beyond endurance. The policy has led to war. If ever there were a place just to leave alone, it is surely the Caucasus.
[email protected]
Comment
Comment