War it is. Part IV.

[onodera]

Let's continue the discussion here.

About the speed with which we destroyed Georgian army. Do not forget that while both Gulf wars were wars quite officially and the second one resulted in Hussein forced to jump into a stairwell, our armed incursion was de facto a peacekeeping mission, so we couldn't do things that are usual during war, like bomb explicitly civilian targets or try and capture Mishiko himself.
We had to stay around Tskhinvali and repeatedly destroy Georgian armour until they had withdrawn.
By then the international community has laready forgotten who has started the whole mess and that we went to the UNSC first and only after it couldn't pass a resolution denouncing Georgia's actions did we send the 58th army in, so we kinda had a Scythian moment and liberated Georgia from her military capacity as much as we could.

[Saras]

Heh, there are already user made scenarios for WinSPMBT like Georgia vs Russia Aug'08, and USMC vs Russia June '09

War nerds

Btw, I share some of the morbid fascination of Brecher:

http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-south-ossetia-the-war-of-my-dreams/

War Nerd: South Ossetia, The War of My Dreams
By Gary Brecher

There are three basic facts to keep in mind about the smokin’ little war in Ossetia:

1. The Georgians started it.
2. They lost.
3. What a beautiful little war!

For me, the most important is #3, the sheer beauty of the video clips that have already come out of this war. I’m in heaven right now.

Of course, if you want to get all serious and actually study up on Ossetia, North and South, and Georgia and the whole eternal gang war that they call the Caucasus, you can check out a column I did on that school-hostage splatter in Beslan, North Ossetia, a few years back.

But for me, right now, I say let’s stick to the action. This is the war of my dreams—both sides using air forces! How often do you see that these days?—so I’ll skip the history. Just remember that South Ossetia is a little apple-shaped blob dangling from Russian territory down into Georgia, and most of it has been under control of South Ossetian irregulars backed by Russian “peacekeepers” for the last few years.

The Georgians didn’t like that. You don’t give up territory in that part of the world, ever. The Georgians have always been fierce people, good fighters, not the forgiving type. In fact, I can’t resist a little bit of history here: remember when the Mongols wiped out Baghdad in 1258, the biggest slaughter in any of their conquests? Nobody knows how many people were killed, but it was at least 200,000—a pretty big number in the days before antibiotics made life cheap. The smell was so bad the Mongols had to move their camp upwind. Well, the most enthusiastic choppers and burners in the whole massacre were the Georgian Christian troops in Hulagu Khan’s army. Wore out their hacking arms on those Baghdadi civilians.

So: hard people on every side in that part of the world. No quarter asked or given. No good guys. Especially not the Georgians. They have a rep as good people, one-on-one, but you don’t want to mess with them and you especially don’t want to try to take land from them.

The Georgians bided their time, then went on the offensive, Caucasian style, by pretending to make peace and all the time planning a sneak attack on South Ossetia. They just signed a treaty granting autonomy to South Ossetia this week, and then they attacked, Corleone style. Georgian MLRS units barraged Tskhinvali, the capital city of South Ossetia; Georgian troops swarmed over Ossetian roadblocks; and all in all, it was a great, whiz-bang start, but like Petraeus asked about Iraq way back in 2003, what’s the ending to this story? As in: how do you invade territory that the Russians have staked out for protection without thinking about how they’ll react?

Saakashvili just didn’t think it through. One reason he overplayed his hand is that he got lucky the last time he had to deal with a breakaway region: Ajara, a tiny little strip of Black Sea coast in southern Georgia. This is a place smaller than some incorporated Central Valley towns, but it declared itself an “autonomous” republic, preserving its sacred basket-weaving traditions or whatever. You just have to accept that people in the Caucasus are insane that way; they’d die to keep from saying hello to the people over the next hill, and they’re never going to change. The Ajarans aren’t even ethnically different from Georgians; they’re Georgian too. But they’re Muslims, which means they have to have their own Lego parliament and Tonka-Toy army and all the rest of that Victorian crap, and their leader, a wack job named Abashidze (Goddamn Georgian names!) volunteered them to fight to the death for their worthless independence. Except he was such a nut, and so corrupt, and the Ajarans were so similar to the Georgians, and their little “country” was so tiny and ridiculous, that for once sanity prevailed and the Ajarans refused to fight, let themselves get reabsorbed by that Colussus to the North, mighty Georgia.

Well, like I’ve said before, there’s nothing as dangerous as victory. Makes people crazy. Saakashvili started thinking he could gobble up any secessionist region—like, say, South Ossetia. But there are big differences he was forgetting—like the fact that South Ossetia isn’t Georgian, has a border with Russia, and is linked up with North Ossetia just across that border. The road from Russia to South Ossetia is pretty fragile as a line of supply; it goes through the Roki Tunnel, a mountain tunnel at an altitude of 10,000 feet. I have to wonder why the Georgian air force—and it’s a good one by all accounts—didn’t have as its first mission in the war the total zapping of the South Ossetian exit of that tunnel. Or if you don’t trust the flyboys, send in your special forces with a few backpacks full of HE. There are a lot of ways to cripple a tunnel. Hell, do it low-tech: drive a fuel truck in there, with a car following, jackknife the truck halfway through with a remote control or timing fuse—truck driver gets out and strolls to the car, one fast U-turn and you’re out and back in Georgia, just in time to see a ball of flame erupt from the tunnel exit. And rebuilding a tunnel way up in the mountains is not an easy or a fast job. Sure, the Russians could resupply by air, but that’s a much, much tougher job and would at least slow down the inevitable. Weird, then, that as far as I know the Georgians didn’t even try to blast that tunnel. I don’t go in for this kind of long-distance micromanaging of warfare, because there’s usually a good reason on the ground for tactical decisions; it’s the strategic decisions that are really crazy most of the time. But this one I just don’t get.

Most likely the Georgians just thought the Russians wouldn’t react. They were doing something they learned from Bush and Cheney: sticking to best-case scenarios, positive thinking. The Georgian plan was classic shock’n’awe with no hard, grown-up thinking about the long term. Their shiny new army would go in, zap the South Ossetians while they were on a peace hangover (the worst kind), and then…uh, they’d be welcomed as liberators? Sure, just like we were in Iraq. Man, you pay a price for believing in Bush. The Georgians did. They thought he’d help. And I just saw the little creep on TV, sitting in the stands watching the US-China basketball game. (Weird game—the Chinese were taller, muscled the boards inside but couldn’t shoot from outside. Not what you expect from foreign b-ball teams at all.) I didn’t even recognize Bush at first, just wondered why they kept doing close-ups of this guy who looked like Hank Hill’s legless dad up in the stands. Then they said it was the Prez. They talk about people “growing in office”; well, he shrunk.

And the more he shrinks, the more you pay for believing in him. The Georgians were naïve because they were so happy to get out from the Soviets, the Russians’ old enemy, the US, must be paradise. So they did their apple-polishing best to be the perfect obedient little ally. Then we’d let them into NATO and carpet-bomb them with SUVs and ipods.

Their part of the deal was simple: they sent troops to Iraq. First a contingent of 850, then a surprisingly huge 2000 men. When you consider the population of Georgia is less than five million, that’s a lot of troops. In fact, Georgia is the third-biggest contributor to the “Coalition of the Willing,” after the US and Britain.

You might be thinking, Wow, not a good time to have so many of your best troops in Iraq, huh? Well, that’s true and it goes for a lot of countries—like us, for instance—but at least we’re not facing a Russian invasion. The Georgians are so panicked they just announced they’re sending half their Iraqi force home, and could the USAF please give’em a lift?

We’ll probably give them a ride, but that’s about all we can do. We’ve already done plenty, not because we love Georgians but to counterbalance the Russian influence down where the new oil pipeline’s staked out. The biggest American aid project was the GTEP, “Georgia Train and Equip” project ($64 million). It featured 200 Special Forces instructors teaching fine Georgia boys all the lessons the US Army’s learned recently. Now here’s the joke—and military history is just one long series of mean jokes. We were stressing counterinsurgency skills: small-unit cohesion, marksmanship, intelligence. The idea was to keep Georgia safe from Chechens or other Muslim loonies infiltrating through the Pankisi Gorge in NE Georgia. And we did a good job. The Georgian Army pacified the Pankisi in classic Green-Beret style. The punch line is, the Georgians got so cocky from that success, and from their lovefest with the Bushies in DC, that they thought they could take on anybody. What they’re in the process of finding out is that a light-infantry CI force like the one we gave them isn’t much use when a gigantic Russian armored force has just rolled across your border.

The American military’s response so far has been all talk, and pretty damn stupid talk at that. A Pentagon spokes-thingy called Russia’s response “disproportionate.” What the Hell are they talking about? They’ve been watching too many cop shows. Cops have this doctrine of “minimum necessary force,” not that they actually operate that way unless there are video cameras around. Armies never, ever had that policy, because it’s a good way to get your troops killed needlessly. The whole idea in war is to fight as unfairly and disproportionately as possible. If you’ve got it, you use it. Thank God we never fought “proportionately” in Viet Nam. The French tried that, because they never had much of an air force, and got wiped out. By the time the French withdrew from Indochina, their Lefty Prime Minister, Mendes-France, made a big show of promising peace withing 30 days of taking office—and his commanders in Indochina said privately, “I don’t think we can hold out that long.” That’s what fighting “proportionately” gets you: Dien Bien Phu.

If you want a translation, luckily I speak fluent Pentagon. So what “disproportionate” means is—well, imagine that you’re watching some little hanger-on who tags along with you get his ass whipped by a bully, and you say, “That’s inappropriate!” I mean, instead of actually helping him. That’s what “disproportionate” means from the Pentagon: “We’re not going to lift a finger to help you, but hey, we’re with you in spirit, little buddy!”

The quickest way to see who’s winning in any war is to see who asks first for a ceasefire. And this time it was the Georgians. Once it was clear the Russians were going to back the South Ossetians, the war was over. Even Georgians were saying, “To fight Russia by ourselves is insane.” Which means they thought Russia wouldn’t back its allies. Not a bad bet; Russia has a long, unpredictable history of screwing its allies—but not all the time. The Georgians should know better than anybody that once in a while, the Russians actually come through, because it was Russian troops who saved Georgia from a Persian invasion in 1805, at the battle of Zagam. Of course the Russians had let the Persians sack Tbilisi just ten years earlier without helping. That’s the thing: the bastards are unpredictable. You can’t even count on them to betray their friends (though it’s the safer bet, most of the time, sort of like 6:5 odds).

This time, the Russians came through. For lots of reasons, starting with the fact that Bush is weak and they know it; that the US is all tied up in that crap Iraq war and can’t do ****; and most of all, because Kosovo just declared independence from Serbia, an old Russian ally. It’s tit for tat time, with Kosovo as the tit and South Ossetia as the tat. The way Putin sees it, if we can mess with his allies and let little ethnic enclaves like Kosovo declare independence, then the Russians can do the same with our allies, especially naïve idiotic allies like Georgia.

Luckily, South Ossetia doesn’t matter that much. I’m just being honest here. In a year nobody will care much who runs that little glob of territory. What’s more serious is that another, bigger and more strategic chunk of Georgia called Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, is taking the opportunity to boot out the last Georgian troops on its territory. Georgia may lose almost all its coastline, but then the Georgians were always an inland people anyway, living along river valleys, not great sailors.

What’s happening to Georgia here is like the teeny-tiny version of Germany in the twentieth century: overplay your hand and you lose everything. So if you’re a Georgian nationalist, this war is a tragedy; if you’re a Russian or Ossetian nationalist, it’s a triumph, a victory for justice, whatever. To the rest of us, it’s just kind of fun to watch. And damn, this one has been a LOT of fun! The videos that came out of it! You know, DVD is the best thing to happen to war in a long time. All the fun, none of the screaming agony—it’s war as Diet Coke.

See, this is the war that I used to see in the paintings commissioned by Defense contractors in Aviation Week and AFJ: a war between two conventional armies, both using air forces and armored columns, in pine-forested terrain. That was what those pictures showed every time, with a highlighted closeup of the weapon they were selling homing in on a Warsaw Pact convoy coming through a German pine forest. Of course, a real NATO/Warsaw Pact war would never, ever have happened that way. It would have gone nuclear in an hour or less, which both sides knew, which is why it never happened. So all that beautiful weaponry was kind of a farce, if it was only going to be used in the Fulda Gap. But damn, God is good, because here it all is, in the same kind of terrain, all your favorite old images: Russian-made tanks burning, a Soviet-model fighter-bomber falling from the sky in pieces, troops in Russian camo fighting other troops, also in Russian camo, in a skirmish by some dilapidated country shack.

No racial overtones to get bummed out by—everybody on both sides is white! And white from places you don’t know or care about!

The fretting and fussing and sky-is-falling crap about this war is going to die down fast, and the bottom line will be simple: the Georgians overplayed their hand and got slapped, and we caught a little of the follow-through, which is what happens when you waste your best troops—and Georgia’s, for that matter—on a dumb war in the wrong place. We detatched Kosovo from a Russian ally; they detached South Ossetia from an American ally. It’s a pawn exchange, if that. If it signals anything bigger, it’s the fact that the US is weaker than it was ten years ago and Russia is much, much stronger than it was in Yeltsin’s time. But anybody with sense knew all that already.

What will last is those beautiful videos, like some NATO-era dream, like God giving me one last chance to see the weapons I spent my twenties dreaming about in action. Even the wounded-civilian videos are interesting because a lot of the wounded are fat and old, which you didn’t see much in classic Korean or Normandy or Nam footage.

We’re the new normal, but damn, we sure are ugly casualties. Skinny people just look better sitting in rubble with bloody faces, I can’t lie.

As the war fades out—and it will; countries don’t fight to the death these days—there’ll be time to see how the various weapons systems played. I’m especially interested to see how well the Georgian air defense missiles, some very good recent Russian models, worked. But there’s plenty of time to bebrief later. For now, just go to LiveLeak or YouTube (LiveLeak has better stuff right now) and enjoy yourself. This is when us war nerds get all the free porn we can handle. Call in sick, take your comp time, whatever—just don’t miss those videos.

[BlackCat]

A russian journalists wiew on the war - Serb will probably call her a CIA agent.

Yulia Latynina is a columnist for "Novaya gazeta" and a host on Ekho Moskvy. This comment was originally published by "Yezhednevny zhurnal." The views expressed in this commentary are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL

http://www.rferl.org/content/Article/1189525.html

South Ossetia Crisis Could Be Russia's Chance To Defeat Siloviki

South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity (right) outside Tskhinvali on August 7
August 08, 2008
By Yulia Latynina

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has handed his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, a victory over the "siloviki" in Russia. And if Medvedev is able to take advantage of the fruits of this victory, the consequences will be significant not so much for Tbilisi as for Moscow.

So, why is this a victory over the siloviki -- those in the Russian ruling elite with close ties to the state security organs? Because there is no way the regime in South Ossetia can be in any sense called "separatist." Who there is a separatist? The head of the local KGB, Anatoly Baranov, used to head the Federal Security Service (FSB) in the Russian Republic of Mordovia. The head of the South Ossetian Interior Ministry, Mikhail Mindzayev, served in the Interior Ministry of Russia's North Ossetia. The South Ossetian "defense minister," Vasily Lunev, used to be military commissar in Perm Oblast, and the secretary of South Ossetia's Security Council, Anatoly Barankevich, is a former deputy military commissar of Stavropol Krai. So who exactly is a separatist in this government? South Ossetian "prime minister" Yury Morozov?

However, alas, I also cannot say this regime is "pro-Russian." On the contrary, all the recent actions of Eduard Kokoity, the leader of the breakaway South Ossetian government, have run counter to the interests of Russia in the Caucasus -- beginning with his embarrassing Russia in the eyes of the international community and ending with his ratcheting up the tensions in the very region where Russia might begin to come undone. South Ossetia is not a territory, not a country, not a regime. It is a joint venture of siloviki generals and Ossetian bandits for making money in a conflict with Georgia. For me, the most surprising thing in this entire story is the complete lack of any strategic goals on the part of the South Ossetians.

As soon as Russia tamped down the war in Abkhazia, tensions in South Ossetia started rising. South Ossetian forces start shelling Georgian villages, and as soon as Georgia returns fire, the airwaves are filled with accusations of "Georgian aggression." No one pays attention to the fact that when this happens, Kokoity is not on the front lines or visiting the injured in a hospital -- he's 1,000 kilometers away in Abkhazia, apparently offering the Russian siloviki his people as hostages, as another card to be played to inflame the situation and make a few more dollars.

Again -- nothing that is going on in South Ossetia makes any sense from the point of view of strategy. It only makes sense as a means of making money. And we aren't talking about small sums. Running a gas pipeline through the mountains from Russia -- a precaution in case Georgia decides to cut off the 70,000 residents -- cost $570 million. And then there is the secret budget Russia has allotted for the struggle -- estimated at somewhere around $800 million. And don't forget the pensions and wages for state-sector workers, who officially number some 80,000 but whose actual numbers are not more than 30,000.

'Terrorist State'

Whenever someone starts telling us about shelling in Tskhinvali, it is important to keep in mind exactly what Tskhinvali is. It is not a city somewhere in the middle of a republic that is being fired upon by saboteurs. On three sides, Tskhinvali is surrounded by Georgian villages. The edge of Tskhinvali is a military outpost. South Ossetian forces fire from there into the Georgian villages, and the Georgians respond with fire of their own. To help keep Georgian fire from hitting civilians in the city, all the South Ossetians would have to do is move their military base forward a couple hundred meters.

But, of course, it is a fundamental principle of terrorists the world over -- set up firing points in civilian areas and then when your enemy fires on you, you gleefully parade the bodies of your own children in front of the television cameras. Kokoity's terrorists are following this same principle. If South Ossetia can in any way be considered a state, it must be considered a terrorist state.

When we are told about "peaceful civilians" in South Ossetia, we must keep in mind that the situation there is similar to that in Palestinian refugee camps. South Ossetia, like the Palestinian Liberation Organization before it, is not a state or an ethos or a territory. It is a peculiar form of mutated government in which residents have been turned into militarized refugees. It is a quasi-armed force that is not allowed by the authorities to occupy itself with anything other than war -- a situation that gives the authorities absolute power and absolute control over the money at its disposal. It is a place where the hysteria of this disfigured population is the primary means of filling the authorities' personal coffers.

Even more surprising is the fact that the leaders of this region -- despite all their talk -- apparently have done very little to prepare for war and have turned out to be absolutely helpless. At the first sign of trouble, the general director of this joint venture hightailed it out of Tskhinvali. I was amazed to get news overnight that Russian journalists were hunkered down in the main government building and there wasn't even a bomb shelter there. What does that mean? That all the money Moscow allocated for our joint venture never made it outside the Moscow ring road? They were all shouting "Wolf, wolf!" but they didn't even manage to build a barn for the sheep?

Georgia, I think, will win in this conflict for the simple reason that it has a clear strategic goal. The Russian siloviki do not. Moreover, it turns out that these people -- who are pretty good at bankrupting factories and terrorizing companies -- ran without looking back when faced with a real army and all they are capable of doing is complaining to the United Nations.

War Of Lies

It would seem that the siloviki really thought that there is nothing more to war than lying. Lying about "unprovoked shelling" and about wounded "civilians" who are shown on television wearing camouflage. They are still using this tactic: What are we to make of their claims during the night that Georgian airplanes had bombed a column of humanitarian aid coming out of the Roki Tunnel between North and South Ossetia? I'd like to know who was the Russian general who -- on the very night when Saakashvili had been issued a moratorium and tanks and heavy equipment were moving from Russia to Tskhinvali -- decided to clog up the only road with a humanitarian convoy. If there is such an idiot, he should, at the least, be demoted to the ranks. The siloviki supposed that the war would be won by the side that lied the most. Saakashvili knew that the war would be won by the one who won the war.

The latest events prove that Russia does not control what Kokoity does. Temur Iakobashvili, the Georgian minister for reintegration, arrived recently in Tskhinvali for talks and the Russian Foreign Ministry did everything it could to facilitate them. But Kokoity simply left the city. Saakashvili announced a unilateral cease-fire and in response, to show that the joint venture needs more money, South Ossetians opened fire on the villages of Tamarasheni and Prisi. We can only hope that Georgia sees that at least some in the Kremlin do not intend to support Kokoity. You can support an ally. You can prop up a puppet. But you cannot support a joint venture that is just pumping money out of the Russian budget by means of inflaming the Caucasus.

So, I repeat -- Saakashvili has bankrupted the joint venture of the Lubyanka chekisty and the Ossetian bandits. Russia, as a country, has no interest in this enterprise. And the joint venture only had one interest in Russia -- the same interest that a cancerous tumor has on its host body. We can only thank Saakashvili for the chemotherapy.

The main question in the current situation is what will Russia do now. There are two choices. One would be to get entangled in a full-scale war, which is what the siloviki have been trying to force Moscow to do for the last few months. It doesn't matter to them who wins that war or how many victims there are. The mere fact of a war will mean that the siloviki will maintain their control over Russia. In fact, a defeat for Russia would be even better for the siloviki than a victory; there would be shouts, recriminations, hysterics, and -- in the end -- more money.

The second scenario is that this is a chance for Medvedev and for Russia. If Russia stays out of the fighting, that would be a defeat for the siloviki. And, maybe, the complete bankruptcy not just of their branch office in South Ossetia, but of the home office on Lubyanka as well.

[Kidlicious]

Re: War it is. Part IV.

Originally posted by onodera
Let's continue the discussion here.

About the speed with which we destroyed Georgian army. Do not forget that while both Gulf wars were wars quite officially and the second one resulted in Hussein forced to jump into a stairwell, our armed incursion was de facto a peacekeeping mission, so we couldn't do things that are usual during war, like bomb explicitly civilian targets or try and capture Mishiko himself.
We had to stay around Tskhinvali and repeatedly destroy Georgian armour until they had withdrawn.
By then the international community has laready forgotten who has started the whole mess and that we went to the UNSC first and only after it couldn't pass a resolution denouncing Georgia's actions did we send the 58th army in, so we kinda had a Scythian moment and liberated Georgia from her military capacity as much as we could.

Yeah, too bad you were just on a "peacekeeping mission"

[BlackCat]

From previous thread :

Georgia has exercised as much authority there as China on Taiwan. Georgia just represents Ossetia in the UN as PRC represents its renegade province Taiwan. I am sure my Chinese friend agrees.

As far as I know, PRC doesn't have any troops in Taiwan while Georgia have had it in SO for several years :

http://www.caucaz.com/home_eng/depeches.php?idp=775&PHPSESSID=17aec938a80f732eafb84b8a8dc32c9f

Print | Contact Caucaz.com Staff | Read all Breaking News from 'South Ossetia' Newsline | Home
Sout Ossetia: Georgia rotates peacekeepers, reopens road
Breaking News published on 21/02/2006






Tskhinvali, 21 February 2006 (Civil Georgia - website) - Paata Bedianashvili, commander of the Georgian peacekeeping battalion, said on February 20 that the Georgian peacekeeping battalion passed through Tskhinvali and was deployed at the checkpoint located near the Georgian village of Achabeti.

“We were given [security] guarantees and our peacekeepers managed to reach their destination [in Achabeti] via Tskhinvali; as a result, the rotation process is now over,” Bedianashvili told Civil Georgia.

Earlier, on February 19, the Georgian side blocked roads to Tskhinvali both from the north and south after the South Ossetian side announced that a rotation of the Georgian peacekeepers in the conflict zone was illegal and refused to let the Georgian peacekeepers move through Tskhinvali.

Currently all the roads to Tskhinvali are open.

Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli said on February 18 that Georgia will have about 330 servicemen in its peacekeeping battalion after the rotation. He also said that starting from spring Georgia will rotate its peacekeepers in the conflict zone once in three months

I would call that exercising authority.

[BlackCat]

Is this a war crime, violation of human rights or just a plain atrocity ? I mean wake up layers and unleash them

Georgia sues Russia at the International Court of Justice :

http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=1&case=140&code=GR&p3=0

[onodera]

Originally posted by BlackCat
A russian journalists wiew on the war - Serb will probably call her a CIA agent.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Article/1189525.html

No one here takes Latynina seriously. She's not a CIA agent, she's just a lousy hysteria-prone journalist.

[snoopy369]

Wow, you'd think the ICJ could afford to pay someone to use a scanner properly...

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by onodera

No one here takes Latynina seriously. She's not a CIA agent, she's just a lousy hysteria-prone journalist.

Well, it seems that Echo of Moscow, Novaya Gazeta and The Moscow Times thinks that she worth her money.

[onodera]

Originally posted by BlackCat


Well, it seems that Echo of Moscow, Novaya Gazeta and The Moscow Times thinks that she's worth her money.

Echo of Moscow has good newscasts and nighttime programs. Their editorials are mostly abominable.
No one reads the Moscow Times.
NG probably uses her to attract attention.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by onodera

Their editorials are mostly abominable.

So they are mostly truthful then?

[PLATO]

Russians are such impartial peacekeepers.....

Russia aims to keep control of Georgian port city
By BELA SZANDELSZKY – 2 hours ago

POTI, Georgia (AP) — Thousands of Georgians angry at the presence of Russian troops on the outskirts of the strategic Black Sea port of Poti took to the streets Saturday, waving Georgian flags and urging the Russians to leave.

The protest came as a top Russian general said his country's forces would keep patrolling Poti even though it lies outside the areas where Russia claims it has the right to station soldiers in Georgia.

"Russian military: You are not a liberating military, you are an occupying force," one man was heard shouting.

On Friday, Russia said it had pulled back forces from Georgia in accordance with a EU-brokered cease-fire agreement. Russia, though, interprets the accord as allowing it to keep a substantial military presence in Georgia — a point hotly disputed by the United States, France and Britain.

The Russian troop pullback allowed residents of the strategic central city of Gori to begin returning two weeks after they fled Russian air attacks and advancing troops. Chaotic crowds of people and cars were jammed outside the city Saturday as Georgian police tried to control the mass return by setting up makeshift checkpoints.

Those who were let through came back to find a city battered by bombs, suffering from food shortages and gripped by anguish.

Surman Kekashvili, 37, stayed in Gori, taking shelter in a basement after his apartment was destroyed by a Russian bomb. Several days ago, he tried to bury three relatives killed by the bomb, placing what body parts he could find in a shallow grave covered by a burnt log, a rock and a piece of scrap metal.

"I took only a foot and some of a torso. I could not get the other bodies out," he said.

His next-door neighbor, Frosia Dzadiashvili, found most of her apartment destroyed, leaving only a room the size of a broom closet to stay in.

"I have nothing. My neighbors feed me if they have food to share," the 70-year-old woman said.

On Saturday afternoon, several thousand protesters waving Georgian flags approached a Russian position on the outskirts of Gori. Some soldiers came out of their trenches, but there was no immediate sign of unrest.

Russia claims it is allowed to be in so-called "security zones" under peacekeeping agreements that ended fighting in the separatist Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the 1990s.

The United States, France and Britain gave protested that Russia has no claim to the alleged "security zones" under the cease-fire accord.

The Russians "have without a doubt failed to live up to their obligations," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said in Washington. "Establishing checkpoints, buffer zones, are definitely not part of the agreement."

Georgia's state minister on reintegration, Temur Yakobashvili, told the AP that formation of a buffer zone on Georgian territory outside South Ossetia "is absolutely illegal."

On Saturday, Russian troops were taking positions in trenches they had dug near a bridge that provides the only access to Poti. Tanks and APCs were parked nearby. They had hoisted both Russian flags and the flag of the Commonwealth of Independent States, or CIS, the union of former Soviet republics that Georgia recently announced it had left. Emotions ran high, though direct confrontation was avoided.

"They have the CIS flag, and that flag is not our Georgian flag," said one protester, Sulkhan Tolordava. "Georgia is not a member of this organization, so the troops must leave very quickly," he said.

While Poti is outside the buffer zone for the Abkhazia conflict, Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn said Russian troops who have set up positions on the city's outskirts won't leave and will patrol the city.

"Poti is not in the security zone. But that doesn't mean that we will sit behind the fence watch as they drive around in Hummers," Nogovitsyn said, referring to four U.S. Humvees the Russians seized in Poti this week.

The vehicles were used in joint U.S.-Georgian military exercises as U.S. trainers prepared Georgians for deployment to Iraq.

Russian forces also set up a checkpoint near Senaki, the home of a major military base in western Georgia. Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said Russian soldiers had severely looted the base, taking away military equipment, televisions and even air conditioners.

In a separate development, a series of explosions rang out over the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, on Saturday. An AP reporter heard the blasts apparently emanating from a stash of weapons confiscated from Georgian troops. The cache is situated next to Tskhinvali's main hospital.

It remained unclear if arms were being deliberately destroyed. No casualties were reported.

Farther north of Tskhinvali, near the South Ossetian-Russian border, another AP reporter saw a convoy of about 150 Russian APCs, trucks and tanks by the roadside.

Russia's pullback on Friday came two weeks to the day after thousands of Russian soldiers roared into the former Soviet republic following an assault by Georgian forces on separatist South Ossetia. The fighting left hundreds dead and nearly 160,000 people homeless.

It also has deeply strained relations between Moscow and the West. Russia has frozen its military cooperation with NATO, Moscow's Cold War foe, underscoring a growing division in Europe.

President Bush, vacationing at his ranch in Texas, conferred with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and "the two agreed that Russia is not in compliance and that Russia needs to come into compliance now," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe on Friday.

"They have not completely withdrawn from areas considered undisputed territory, and they need to do that," Johndroe said.

The diplomatic struggle is certain to continue. The Russian parliament was expected to discuss recognizing the independence of the separatist regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia on Monday.

In an interview with the AP, South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity indicated that ethnic Georgians will not be allowed to return to their homes in South Ossetia.

"There is nothing left anymore" for them to come back to, he said.

There has been extensive looting and burning of Georgian homes in South Ossetia. In the village of Achabeti, an AP reporter saw Ossetians remove chairs, window frames and whatever else they could carry from abandoned Georgian houses.

I particularly like how they are protecting the Georgians from South Ossetia right to return to their homes.

[onodera]

Originally posted by PLATO
So they are mostly truthful then?

No. They're so out of touch with the majority of Russians that they have to invent their own truths.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by onodera

No. They're so out of touch with the majority of Russians that they have to invent their own truths.

Shouldn't that be "They tell the truth, but the majority of russians won't belive it because it doesn't match the lies they belive in" ?

Please, onodera, take a moment and think about what you wrote.

[siron]

Originally posted by BlackCat
From previous thread :



As far as I know, PRC doesn't have any troops in Taiwan while Georgia have had it in SO for several years :

http://www.caucaz.com/home_eng/depeches.php?idp=775&PHPSESSID=17aec938a80f732eafb84b8a8dc32c9f

I would call that exercising authority.

Yes, there are also a few Georgian peacekeeping battalions under the authority of an international control commission which was formed in 1992.

IMHO this does not imply that the authority of the state Georgia is exercised there.

But I (and probably my Chinese friend) will carefully listen to further arguments for reintegration of renegade provinces.