Flash Point: South Ossetia (9 - 11 August) - Small Wars Journal

NEWS

Russia Steps Up Its Push - Helene Cooper, New York Times

Russian troops stepped up their advance into Georgian territory on Monday, attempting to turn back the clock to the days when Moscow held uncontested sway over what it considers its “near abroad,” and arousing increasing alarm among Western leaders. Even as they prepared to convene an emergency meeting of NATO on Tuesday and President Bush denounced the Russian actions in the strongest terms to date, the United States and its European allies faced tough choices over how to push back. They seemed uncertain how to adjust to a new geopolitical game that threatened to undermine two decades of democratic gains in countries that were once part of the Soviet sphere. Russian troops briefly seized a Georgian military base and took up positions close to the Georgian city of Gori on Monday, raising Georgian fears of a full-scale invasion or an attempt to oust the country’s pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Russia Pushes Into Georgia - Peter Finn, Washington Post

Russia escalated its war in Georgia again Monday, sending troops and tanks out of friendly separatist enclaves to stage the first major invasion of undisputed Georgian territory. One armored column seized a town and major military base in the west of Georgia, while another menaced the central city of Gori.The Georgian government abandoned Gori and ordered its troops to fall back to defend against a possible drive on Tbilisi, the capital, 40 miles away. In scenes of chaos, retreating Georgian army trucks shared the highway to the capital with cars and pickups loaded with frightened civilians. Other vehicles, victims of Russian attacks, burned by the roadside. Georgian and Russian officials confirmed that Russian soldiers took over the western city of Senaki and its base, about 25 miles from Abkhazia, a disputed separatist zone where Russia has been massing troops in recent days. The seizure effectively opened a second front.

Russia Presses Into Georgia - New York Times

Russian armored vehicles rolled 25 miles into western Georgia and took up positions at a military base here early Monday after issuing an ultimatum to Georgia to disarm its troops, along the boundary with the separatist territory of Abkhazia. The Russian military advances represented the first time Russian forces invaded Georgia proper in the four-day-old conflict, which has unnerved the West and resurrected some Cold War anxieties. Georgian officials said Russian troops had moved into several other cities in western Georgia, holding out the prospect that fighting could escalate on a second front. President Bush, little more than an hour after returning to Washington from the Olympics in Beijing, bluntly warned Russia that its military operations were damaging its reputation and were "unacceptable in the 21st century."

Georgian Army Flees in Disarray - Tony Halpin, The Times

The Georgian Army was in complete disarray last night after troops and tanks fled the town of Gori in panic and abandoned it to the Russians without firing a shot. As Russian armoured columns rolled deep into central and western Georgia, seizing several towns and a military base, President Saakashvili said that his country had been cut in half. For the first time since the crisis erupted last Thursday, Russia admitted that its troops had moved out of Abkhazia, the other breakaway region under Moscow’s protection, and seized the town of Senaki in Georgia proper. Russian officials again insisted that they had no intention of occupying territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia said that the Russian Army was also in command of the towns of Zugdidi and Kurga in the west, and its tanks appeared to be moving from the north and the west towards Tbilisi, the capital.

Fears Russia will Invade Georgia - The Australian

Russian armoured vehicles early today seized a Georgian military base in the country's west as thousands of people fled the central city of Gori fearing an invasion from the east. The incursion in the western town of Senaki was the first time Russian troops had entered Georgia beyond the disputed territories. They appeared to have come from the separatist province of Abkhazia, which has been reinforced by 9000 additional Russian troops and 350 armoured vehicles. Most of the former Soviet republic's military forces are locked up in fighting around the other breakaway region of South Ossetia, where Georgian forces had earlier resumed shelling of the enclave's capital Tskhinvali. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said Russia was seeking to occupy all of Georgia.

Russian Troops Seize Strategic Prize - Damien McElroy, Daily Telegraph

A column of Russian troops advanced 20 miles inside Georgia yesterday to establish a second front in the conflict with Tbilisi. They captured the town of Senaki, south of the Moscow-controlled territory of Abkhazia, creating a deep buffer zone inside Georgian territory. However, officials from both sides said that the Russians later withdrew from the town. The move into Senaki gave the Russians a stranglehold on the country's key east-west highway and the railway line leading to Georgia's main commercial port of Poti on the Black Sea. The afternoon deployment caught Georgian forces unprepared. The Russians, wearing combat armour and carrying rocket-propelled grenades, looked more organised than their US-trained counterparts.

Russia Opens New Front, Drives Deeper into Georgia - Associated Press

Russian tanks roared deep into Georgia on Monday, launching a new western front in the conflict, and Russian planes staged air raids that sent people screaming and fleeing for cover in some towns. The escalating warfare brought sharp words from President Bush, who pressed Moscow to accept an immediate cease-fire and pull its troops out to avert a "dramatic and brutal escalation" of violence in the former Soviet republic. Russian forces for the first time moved well outside the two restive, pro-Russian provinces claimed by Georgia that lie at the heart of the dispute. An Associated Press reporter saw Russian troops in control of government buildings in this town just miles from the frontier and Russian troops were reported in nearby Senaki. Georgia's president said his country had been sliced in half with the capture of a critical highway crossroads near the central city of Gori, and Russian warplanes launched new air raids across the country.

Anxiety Hovers Over Tbilisi - Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post

Suzanne Delgado had come to Tbilisi on Thursday, intending to spend the weekend sightseeing and going to nightclubs. But soon after she arrived, the music at the clubs stopped and the sights included truckloads of shellshocked refugees rolling into the city. "It's been a bit surreal," said Delgado, a Texan who lives in Ankara, Turkey. The Russia-Georgia war has "been around us, but we haven't really been aware." With the conflict escalating again Monday and most international flights canceled, she headed to the US Embassy, which had announced that it would evacuate any American who wanted to get out.

Bush Accuses Russia of 'Brutal Escalation' - Washington Post

President Bush warned in unusually sharp language today that Russia was pursuing a "dramatic and brutal escalation" of its conflict of Georgia, and accused Moscow of seeking to overthrow the pro-Western government in the former Soviet republic. Speaking at the White House upon his return from the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, Bush also demanded an immediate cease-fire and the return of troops to the borders that were recognized last week before hostilities erupted.

Bush Demands Russia Reverse Course - Stack and Spiegel, Los Angeles Times

Russian soldiers plunged into western Georgia on Monday to open a second front in the two countries' 4-day-old war, provoking fresh worries about the Kremlin's ultimate goal in the conflict. In Washington, President Bush said it appeared Russia was planning to overthrow the government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a strong US ally. Using unusually blunt language, he demanded that Russia "reverse the course it appears to be on," but did not say what the United States might do otherwise. Saakashvili, in an interview with CNN, vowed to fight on alone "until the end" if necessary, but added, "My people feel let down by world democracies." The conflict threatens to drive a deeper wedge in a growing divide between Russia and the West. Although Georgia launched the initial attack on South Ossetia, a pro-Russian breakaway region of Georgia, and Russia says it is acting to protect the local population, the United States and Western European countries regard its response as wildly disproportionate.

US Leaders Critical of Russia - Abramowitz and Lynch, Washington Post

The White House stepped up its criticism of Russia for escalating the conflict in Georgia, with President Bush warning Monday that Russia's "disproportionate response" is unacceptable and Vice President Cheney adding that the crisis threatens long-term relations between Moscow and Washington. The criticism came as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared that military operations in Georgia are almost complete, although Russian strikes continued against targets in the central Georgian city of Gori and elsewhere. On the US presidential campaign trail, meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee, said there was no justification for "Moscow's path of violent aggression" and charged that Russian actions were "in clear violation of international law."

Bush Condemns 'Brutal' Russian Invasion - Kelly Hearn, Washington Times

President Bush condemned Moscow for its "dramatic and brutal" invasion of Georgia, as Russian forces rolled deeper into Georgian territory and prompted fears of an all-out war. At the United Nations, the threat of a Russian veto in the Security Council relegated the world body to the sidelines, while forces loyal to Moscow pushed within 35 miles of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Just days after embracing Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Olympics in Beijing, Mr. Bush was forced to condemn the invasion as an action "unacceptable in the 21st century," and demand that Moscow accept an immediate peace agreement "as a first step toward solving this conflict."

Bush Denounces Russia's 'Brutal Escalation' in Georgia - AFPS

President Bush today expressed deep concern that Russia has reportedly escalated a conflict with Georgia, calling the ramped-up moves by Moscow “unacceptable in the 21st century.” A spat that began last week in the breakaway Georgian area of South Ossetia has today broadened “beyond the zone of conflict,” to include a Russian attack on the Georgian town of Gori, and threats to the capital city of Tbilisi, the president said. “If these reports are accurate, these Russian actions would represent a dramatic and brutal escalation of the conflict in Georgia,” Bush said. He added that such actions would be would be inconsistent with assurances by Russia to restore forces in South Ossetia to pre-fighting levels, one element of a peace agreement that Georgia also endorsed.

European Commission Presses Russia on Georgia - Tendai Maphosa, VOA

The European Commission is calling for Russia to halt its military incursion into Georgia. Tendai Maphosa has the details from London. The European Commission expressed extreme concern about the fighting in Georgia. Addressing a press briefing in Brussels, Commission spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy called for Russia to halt its military action immediately. "We consider that that the latest developments such as the crossing of the Georgian borders by Russian troops changed the dimension of he conflict. We therefore call upon Russia to stop immediately all military activity on Georgian territory," she said. Nagy reiterated support for diplomatic efforts for an agreement to end hostilities that would respect Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

French, Russian Leaders to Discuss Georgia Crisis - Lisa Bryant, VOA

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to hold talks in Moscow Tuesday with his Russian counterpart in a bid to find a solution to the conflict in Georgia. Nicolas Sarkozy. President Nicolas Sarkozy's trip to Russia comes after Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili told reporters he had accepted an international ceasefire proposal over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia. Mr. Saakashvili also said Mr. Sarkozy will be holding talks with him in Georgia, as well as with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Moscow. The French president will also speak on behalf of the European Union, which France currently heads. The international community has sounded the alarm over the sharp clashes between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia, which has also spilled into other parts of Georgia, including Abkhazia, another breakaway territory. The European Commission called Monday for an immediate halt to Russian military activity in Georgia. French and Finnish foreign ministers were also in Georgia Monday and were planning to hold talks in Moscow, to take stock of the situation.

UNHCR to Airlift Emergency Supplies to Georgia - Lisa Schlein, VOA

The UN refugee agency says it is mounting an emergency airlift of relief supplies to Georgia. About 90,000 civilians have been displaced by fighting between Georgian and Russian forces. The first flight will leave Monday night from Dubai and will be followed by a second airlift on Wednesday from Copenhagen. UNHCR Spokesman Andrej Mahecic tells VOA the agency has released $2 million from its emergency fund to fly essential non-food items to the stricken area. He says the conditions under which people are living in both Georgia and Russia are difficult and dire.

US Has Few Military Options - Spiegel and Barnes, Los Angeles Times

With President Bush warning Russia that its push into Georgia could jeopardize relations with the US and Europe, the administration signaled Monday that any retribution would be aimed at the Russian economy and prestige. Russia's pummeling of Georgian troops has left Washington with few palatable military options, said administration officials who requested anonymity when discussing internal policy decisions. Acknowledging that military aid to Georgia was off the table and sanctions against Russia were impractical, they insisted the US could take longer-term economic and diplomatic measures that would hit the Kremlin hard. "Just because we are not rushing to place US infantry in Tbilisi does not mean the world is impotent in the face of this aggression," said a senior Pentagon official. Officials said the most likely ways to pressure Russia were through global institutions. Russia is attempting to join the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Membership now is likely to be blocked, they said.

US to Complete Redeployment of Georgian Forces from Iraq - AFPS

The US-assisted redeployment of Georgian troops from Iraq to their home country should be completed today, a Pentagon spokesman said. American military aircraft began shuttling the brigade of Georgian forces yesterday, as clashes with Russian forces intensified since fighting broke out last week in the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia, a former Soviet republic. The US-provided transport of the 2,000-strong contingent adheres to an agreement that US and Georgian government officials arranged before Russian tanks and troops crossed Georgia’s border on Aug. 8, Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman said today. “We are fulfilling our agreement with the Georgian government that in an emergency we would assist them in redeploying their troops,” Whitman said. “We are honoring that commitment and we are following through with that.” At the same time, US military commanders in Iraq are adapting to the departure of Georgian troops, which primarily occupied infantry roles and represented the third-largest foreign contingent in Iraq.

Georgia Conflict Stokes Energy Supply Concerns - Associated Press

Russia's conflict with Georgia could punish the European Union where it is perhaps most vulnerable: Oil and gas supplies from beyond its eastern frontier. The EU has been trying to wean itself away from energy dependence on Moscow, which supplies a quarter of its oil and half of its natural gas, by developing routes for Central Asian resources that bypass Russia. A key to this strategy is a network of energy routes that run through Georgia, notably the Baku Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that was almost hit by a Russian bombing raid Monday.

Sons Missing in Action - Kulish and Schwirtz, New York Times

Nika Kharadze and Giorgi Monasalidze went to war last week, even though they were not warriors. Their parents have been searching for them ever since, through the tangle of disorder and fear that Georgia has become. As swaths of the country fell before Russian troops, it was not only the army that rose in its defense but also regular citizens, as part of a Georgian tradition, based both in myth and fact, that stretches back to medieval times. “The main legend of Georgia is that Georgians are warriors because they are subject to constant invasion,” said Anna Lagidze, an educational psychologist in Tbilisi. A legend going back a thousand years, she explained, is that the men went into battle with grapevines tied around their waists so that if they died, new grapes would spring up where they fell. Irregulars and volunteers fighting in Abkhazia in the early 1990s only added to the modern myth. “Many of them now think it is the last chance to defend their homeland,” Ms. Lagidze said. “It comes from the knowledge that the army is not enough and every man is valuable.”

Georgia Soldiers, Civilians Break Down - Megan Stack, Los Angeles Times

The Georgian soldier sprawled facedown in the ditch, so still that he looked dead at first glance. Skinny arms folded over his head, mouth in the dirt, combat boots braced against the earth. He was cowering at the side of the road in South Ossetia, frozen in place. Russian jets, wheeling overhead, had just bombed the road, a hot explosion that sent chunks of dirt and broken pavement showering down. The soldier picked up his head. He looked young and underfed, fevered eyes gleaming in a pinched face. The soldier was among the Georgian troops sent north up this pitted, twisting main road to bring the rebel province of South Ossetia to heel. But on Monday they were retreating back down it, overwhelmed by relentless Russian air assaults. Moscow's tanks and troops and fleets of warplanes had pushed them out of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, and threatened to keep coming up behind them, plunging deeper into Georgia. Now this road clogged with soldiers was a study in Georgia's predicament, a snapshot of defeat and defiance for a proud country entangled in a fight it has slim chance of winning.

BACKGROUND / QUICKLOOKS

Timeline: Key Events in Russian-Georgian Relations - Associated Press
Day-by-Day: South Ossetia Crisis - BBC News
How Russian and Georgian Forces Stack Up - Reuters
South Ossetia Picture Gallery - Washington Post
Factbox: International Reaction to South Ossetia Conflict - Reuters
Georgia - Library of Congress Country Study
Russia - Library of Congress Country Study
Georgia - CIA World Factbook
Russia - CIA World Factbook
Georgia - US State Department Background Note
Russia - US State Department Background Note
Georgia - BBC Country Page
Russia - BBC Country Page
South Ossetia - New York Times background and related news
South Ossetia - BBC background

Russia Opens New Front, Deeper Into Georgia

Abkhaz Forces Launch Offensive Against Georgian Troops

Georgian Helicopters Bomb South Ossetia Targets

South Ossetians Flee Cellars for Safety in Russia

Medvedev: Operations in Georgia Almost Complete

Strategic Blunder Led Georgia Into South Ossetia Folly

Cheney: 'Russian Aggression Must Be Answered'

Georgia Leader Says Needs More Help From West

War Puts Focus on McCain's Hard Line on Russia

Mikhail Gorbachev: Georgia Flouted Peaceful Means

Russia Cuts South Ossetia Casualty Conflict Figures

High-Stakes Gambler Who Risked His Country and Links With the West

Georgians Angry at Their Govt, Russia, US

Georgian Iraq Exit Leaves Vacuum Near Iranian Border

Georgian Forces Rush to Defend Capital

Russia Denies Troops Have Taken Gori

Roots of Georgia-Russia Clash Run Deep

Anxiety Hovers Over Tbilisi

Georgian Civilians Head Off to Fight Russians

Georgian Leader Says Backs Ossetia Plan

Amid War, Contrasts Line the Coast of Georgia

Georgia Under Online Assault

Russia Allocates $200 Million Aid for South Ossetia

Bush Warns Russia to Stop 'Escalation' in Georgia

Bush Questions Russia's Motives

US Options Restricted to 'Verbal Diplomacy'

Russian Offensive Imperils US Aims on Iran, Energy

Israel Says Cut Georgia Arms Sales Months Ago

Russia Seeks Emergency Meeting With NATO

Russia Rejects UN Draft on Georgia

McCain Accuses Russia of Bidding to Wipe Out Georgia

Widening Russian Action in Georgia Affecting Global Oil Supplies

Concerns for Vital Caspian Oil Pipeline

US Evacuates More Than 170 Americans From Georgia

Eastern Europe Anxious as Russia Attacks Georgia

Conflict Is Unlikely to Deter Russia Investors

South Ossetia Humanitarian Crisis: Georgian Forces Target Residential Areas - 2008-08-10


Moscow accuses NATO of having "encouraged Georgia" to attack South Ossetia - 2008-08-10


Russia says Georgian forces expelled from South Ossetian capital - 2008-08-09


NATO encouraged Georgia – Russian envoy - 2008-08-08


South Ossetia says over 1,000 dead after Georgian attack - 2008-08-08


South Ossetia under Georgian attack - 2008-08-08


Russia to act if Georgia-Ossetia row worsens - 2008-08-05

2,000 killed in Georgian offensive: Russia: Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sobyanin described the situation in the war zone as a “humanitarian catastrophe.” He said over 30,000 refugees from South Ossetia had crossed into Russia in the past 36 hours.

Russia Says 18 Troops Killed, 4 Planes Downed In Georgia: Russia's armed forces have lost 18 soldiers and four aircraft in the conflict with Georgia, a senior Russian commander told a news conference Monday.

Russian Troops Launch Ground Offensive in Georgia: Russia sent ground forces into Georgia proper for the first time since fighting began five days ago, seizing a military base and forcing the Georgian army to retreat toward the capital.

Russian troops in Georgia advance: Moscow said it had launched a raid on the town of Senaki to stop Georgia from attacking Russian forces in South Ossetia, another breakaway region.

Georgia claims Russians have cut country in half: Russia opened a second front of fighting in Georgia on Monday, sending armored vehicles beyond two breakaway provinces and seizing a military base in the country's west, officials said.

U.N. Security Council Calls for Emergency Session to Resolve Georgia-Russia Crisis: Facing Russia's superior firepower and expanding range of attacks, Georgia requested this latest session, which is to begin at 5 p.m. EDT in New York.

The west can no longer stand idle while the Russian bully wreaks havoc: The clashes with Georgia follow years of aggressive Kremlin policy. Moscow needs to be told its G8 place is not unconditional

US diplomat blames Russia of planned invasion of Georgia: ‘We have listened to statements from the Russian side, that the railroad troops, introduced to Abkhazia months ago were deployed there with a humanitarian mission. Now we know the truth

US sends more arms to Georgia – Israeli media: The United States is sending fresh supplies of weapons to Georgia from its base in the Jordanian port of Aqabah. That’s according to the Israeli newspaper – Maariv.

Putin blames US govt for encouraging aggression: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday flayed the US for encouraging Georgia’s "aggression" as Russia and the Tbilisi government accused each other of launching fresh attacks, amid stepped up EU diplomatic efforts to end the conflict over the disputed territory of South Ossetia.

Putin complains over US Georgia troops lift: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin today accused the United States of adding to the chaos in Georgia by airlifting home its troops serving in Iraq.

Russians decry Western "propaganda" over crisis: The West is drumming up anti-Russian propaganda and its media unfairly portraying Russia during the crisis with Georgia, ordinary Russians, officials and news outlets said on Monday.

RUSSIA HALTS MILITARY ACTION
<h4 class="subhead">Russian President Medvedev: "The Aggressor Has Been Punished And Suffered"</h4> Quick Read

'Poor Little Georgia' – Not! by Justin Raimondo

Playing With Fire in the Caucasus: Doug Bandow

The Seeds of Another Cold War?: Anthony Gregory

Israelis Worried About Georgia: Peter Hirschberg

Neocons Now Love International Law: Robert Parry

Russia, Georgia Agree to Outlines of Peace Plan Russia Declares Cease-Fire, but Stops Short of Withdrawal Georgia Agrees to Modified Russia Peace Plan

Israeli Arms Sales to Georgia Raise Concerns Splits Emerge Within EU Over Ossetia Moldovan Separatists Break Off Talks Over Georgia

Moscow Agrees To Georgia Truce - Peter Finn, Washington Post

Russia said Tuesday that it had ended its five-day tank and bomber assault against Georgia and agreed to a French peace plan by which most Russian forces would return home and international mediators would work to settle the long and explosive conflict between Georgia and Russian-backed South Ossetian separatists. "The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses; its military has been scattered," said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking to his defense minister in a meeting aired on state television. He added: "If there are any emerging hotbeds of resistance or any aggressive actions, you should take steps to destroy them." Whether a cease-fire had taken hold was unclear. Georgian authorities and foreign journalists reported that Russian forces continued to attack after Medvedev's words were broadcast, bombing the frontline city of Gori inside undisputed Georgian territory. There were reports of South Ossetian paramilitary fighters killing Georgian civilians, unrestrained by Russian troops.

Russia Agrees to Cease-Fire Terms - Kramer and Barry, New York Times

The presidents of Georgia and Russia agreed early Wednesday morning on a framework that could end the war that flared up here five days ago, after Russia reasserted its traditional dominance of the region. Declaring that “the aggressor has been punished,” President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia announced early Tuesday that Russia would stop its campaign. Russian airstrikes continued during the day as mediators tried to broker an agreement and antagonisms seethed on both sides. By 2 a.m. on Wednesday, Mr. Medvedev and his Georgian counterpart, Mikheil Saakashvili, had agreed on a plan that would withdraw troops to the positions they had occupied before the fighting broke out. Whether the agreement takes holds, Russia has achieved its goals, effectively creating a new reality on the ground, humiliating the Georgian military and increasing the pressure on a longtime antagonist, Mr. Saakashvili. Russian authorities make no secret of their desire to see Mr. Saakashvili prosecuted on war crimes in The Hague, and could well try other measures to undermine him.

US Sees Russian Fear of Global Reproof - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

The Bush administration suggested yesterday that an apparent cease-fire in Georgia came about because Moscow feared it would be banished from Western-dominated international economic and political institutions if it did not stop its "aggression" in the former Soviet republic. "Russia has one foot into the international community... and one foot that is not," a senior administration official said. Membership in institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the Group of Eight major industrialized nations "is what is at stake when Russia engages in behavior that looks like it came from another time." Officials indicated that an upcoming meeting between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance, NATO's governing board, had been canceled and that a NATO-Russia naval exercise, aimed at improving maritime security cooperation, would not take place as planned on Friday.

Shattered Georgia Pays High Price for Peace - The Times

A victorious Kremlin agreed to a ceasefire in the Caucasus last night on terms that left Georgia and its Western backers weakened. After five days of fighting, President Medvedev of Russia ordered his troops in South Ossetia to hold their fire and fixed a six-point peace plan with President Sarkozy of France. The deal, confirmed by Georgia’s President Saakashvili last night, did not address the future of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakway provinces that want closer links with Russia. The French President, negotiating on behalf of the EU, insisted that Moscow had promised to respect Georgia’s sovereignty even though the proposals raised questions about its territorial integrity. In the United States, there was widespread dismay over the ease with which Moscow had imposed its will on a loyal US ally.

Russia Halts Georgian Offensive - Peter Wilson, The Australian

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last night ordered a halt to military action in Georgia after five days of air and land attacks that took Moscow's forces deep into the small Western-allied nation. Mr Medvedev said the military had punished Georgia enough for its attack on South Ossetia as the refugees from the conflict triggered by Tbilisi on Friday swelled to 100,000. "The security of our peacekeepers and civilians has been restored,'' Mr Medvedev said on national television. "The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses. Its military has been disorganised.'' But Mr Medvedev said he had ordered the Russian military to defend itself and quell any signs of Georgian aggression. Georgia launched the offensive to regain control over the separatist province with close ties to Russia. "If there are any emerging hotbeds of resistance or any aggressive actions, you should take steps to destroy them,'' Mr Medvedev told Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov at a televised meeting. Dismissing Georgian claims of a full-scale invasion, Mr Medvedev said Russian forces would not advance on the capital, Tbilisi, or force "regime change'' on Georgia. Only a few hours after Mr Medvedev order a halt to the offensive at 12.40pm (6.40pm AEDT), about 100,000 defiant Georgians streamed down Tbilisi's Rustaveli Avenue to the national parliament. President Mikheil Saakashvili told a sea of red and white flags that Georgia would quit the Russian dominated Commonwealth of Independent States and urged Ukraine to follow suit.

Russia 'Annexes' a Fifth of Georgia - David Blair, Daily Telegraph

Russia altered the balance of power in Europe when the Kremlin halted its attack on Georgia after its forces had effectively annexed 18 per cent of the country. Russia closed its Five Day War in full control of Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which total more than 4,800 square miles of the neighbouring state. While Russian troops have been deployed in these enclaves since 1992, they have never previously controlled their entire territory. Having achieved this by force, Moscow's terms for a permanent truce would cement its gains. The Kremlin has also demonstrated its indifference to western opinion and its willingness to use force to prevent a former Soviet republic from joining NATO.

Russia Racks Arsenal, Halts Fighting - Kelly Hearn, Washington Times

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for a halt to fighting in Georgia on Tuesday and the leaders of France and Russia inked a cease-fire deal, but not before Georgia's modernized arsenal sustained massive damage. "We haven´t achieved peace yet, but we have achieved a provisional cease-fire of hostilities," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said. Georgia's president said early Wednesday that he agreed to the "general principles" of a plan for ending fighting with Russian troops in his country.

Medvedev Agrees to End Military Action in Georgia - Voice of America

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his French counterpart say they have agreed on a series of conditions aimed at paving the way for ending violence in Georgia and its breakaway provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The six-point plan allows for humanitarian aid workers to have unrestricted access to the region. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for Georgian and Russian troops to withdraw to pre-conflict positions, but said Russian troops will take extra security measures in the area until an international mechanism is put in place to carry out the same function. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said his primary goal in meeting with Mr. Medvedev was to call for an end to the fighting, which began last Friday. Mr. Sarkozy called it an "emergency situation" and said his object was not to solve all the problems the region currently faces.

Russia Calls Halt to 5-day Invasion of Georgia - Associated Press

Declaring "the aggressor has been punished," the Kremlin ordered a halt Tuesday to Russia's devastating assault on Georgia - five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins and uprooted 100,000 people. Georgia said the bombs and shells were still coming hours after the cease-fire was declared, and its President Mikhail Saakashvili said Russia's aim all along was not to gain control of two disputed provinces but to "destroy" the smaller nation, a former Soviet state and current US ally.

Saakashvili Accepts Truce Proposal - Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times

Bowing to the reality of vastly superior military might, the Georgian president said Tuesday that he would accept a Russian cease-fire agreement to end a five-day conflict, despite terms that some described as humiliating to his small, proud nation. President Mikheil Saakashvili, while at times seeming defiant, appears to have all but given up his bid to reclaim two disputed regions on the Russian border. Russia, which said it had suspended a campaign that routed Georgia's US-trained military, continued bombing sites deep in the country hours later. At a rally attended by thousands of people in Tbilisi, Saakashvili pledged that one day Georgia would beat Russia.

Georgian President Accepts EU Cease-fire Plan - Associated Press

Georgia's president has told a news conference that he agrees to plan to end the fighting with Russia over breakaway regions in Georgia. Mikhail Saakashvili told reporters after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that "there should be a cease-fire." The plan was negotiated by Sarkozy and has also been agreed to by Russia's president. It calls for both Russian and Georgian troops to move back to their original positions.

Russia: Chance of Further Strikes - Harding and Blomfield, Daily Telegraph

While Russian President Dimitry Medvedev might have called a halt to operations he deliberately left open the possibility of combat by allowing his forces to "defend themselves" from Georgian armed resistance. In characteristically blunt style, Russia also used a show of military force to warn Georgia against taking strategic advantage of Moscow's decision to end hostilities. Within an hour of the order to halt action, the Daily Telegraph witnessed Russian helicopter gunships launch missile strikes deep inside undisputed Georgian territory. The attacks, which were officially denied in Moscow, may have been intended to dissuade Georgian troops from regrouping near the border of South Ossetia after their chaotic retreat on Monday evening.

Gori: Georgians Flee Russian Bombs - Megan Stack, Los Angeles Times

The Russian bombs and shells were falling fast Tuesday afternoon, dropping unseen through mist that clung to the mountains and wisped over the valleys. Panicked people pressed the gas pedal to the floor and roared toward the capital city of Tbilisi, trying to outrun the explosions. Russian helicopters hung low over the foothills. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had said that the "operation to force the Georgian authorities to peace" was finished. But here in Georgia, the war dragged on. "They want to destroy us," groaned Aftondil Huroshvili, who begged for a drink of water in a crowded hospital ward in Tbilisi. The retired topographer had been strolling through Gori's central square when Russia bombed the post office. Shrapnel from the blast shattered his lower leg. "They want to invade and take everything," he said, rolling his balding head back and forth in pain. "Why are they doing this?"

Rice Urges Ceasefire, Diplomatic Solution in Georgia - AFPS

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today urged Russia to deliver on its pledge to cease fire in Georgia, as the United States draws up humanitarian aid plans in the wake of recent fighting in the former Soviet republic. Rice spoke to reporters at the White House after briefing President Bush on diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis in Georgia, where clashes with Russia broke out last week in the breakaway region of South Ossetia and escalated over ensuing days. “The Russians need to stop their military operations, as they have apparently said that they will, but those military operations really do now need to stop because calm needs to be restored,” said Rice, emphasizing the need for a cease-fire by both sides.

NATO Calls for Return to Former Status Quo in Georgia - Lisa Bryant, VOA

As Russia announced a halt to military action in Georgia, NATO members called for a return to the status quo before the conflict - and say the crisis will not hurt Georgia's chances of joining the alliance. Following a meeting of NATO ambassadors in Brussels, the alliance's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, told reporters both sides needed the return to positions they held before August 6, when fighting broke out in the separatist region of South Ossetia and spread to other parts of Georgia. The ambassadors have also called for Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity to be respected.

Heavy Damage in Tskhinvali, Mostly at Gov't Center - Associated Press

Gutted and shrapnel-scarred buildings testify to fierce street battles and heavy rocket and bomb attacks in the separatist capital of South Ossetia. But there is little evidence civilians were specifically targeted by Georgian troops, as Russia claims. During a visit Tuesday arranged by the Russian government, journalists from The Associated Press and other Western media were escorted into the city aboard armored vehicles. Reporters witnessed more than a dozen fires in what appeared to be deserted ethnic Georgian neighborhoods and saw evidence of looting in those areas. The heaviest damage from the recent fighting appeared to be around Tskhinvali's government center.

Russians Move Toward Gorge Despite Cease-fire - Associated Press

The Russian troops sprawled on top of the tanks in a 135-vehicle convoy looked relaxed, with bandannas on their heads rather than helmets. Some smoked, one ate a chunk of watermelon. Many drivers had slung flak jackets over vehicle windows. Georgians on the side of the road watched, quietly. On a bridge, a group of about 20 men who had been swimming in the river stood barechested in shorts as the tanks, armored personnel carriers, fuel, troop and supply trucks, a few hauling artillery pieces, rolled by. The display of Russia's military might came hours after a cease-fire had been declared Tuesday.

In Russia, Nationalist Pride Prevails - Frederick Kunkle, Washington Post

Along Moscow's famously colorful Arbat Street on Tuesday, there was a striking unanimity of views about Russia's brief, one-sided war with Georgia. While many people said they regretted the loss of life, the conflict appeared mainly to have stoked nationalist pride and anger that Russia's show of force over the breakaway region of South Ossetia had been condemned as disproportionate. Some expressed outrage that the country had been blamed for starting the crisis. Others, echoing Russian officials and analysts, suggested there was little difference between the massive military response to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's shelling of the separatist capital last week and the NATO-led bombing of Serbia or the West's recognition of Kosovo's right to independence.

Information War Accompanies Fighting - Peter Fedynsky, Voice of America

During the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia, both sides have broadcast drastically different versions of events, which appears to confirm the old adage that the first casualty in war is the truth. Russia's around the clock television news channel, Vesti 24, informed its viewers that Fidel Castro blames the conflict in Georgia on US President George Bush. The station says the former Cuban leader told Mexican television that Georgian leaders would never have launched an attack on South Ossetia without prior agreement with Mr. Bush. The Bush administration says it does not make such agreements and Geogia's government makes its own decisions. This detail stands in stark contrast to a virtual blackout of information on Russian TV about attacks by Russian forces on targets in Georgia, including bombs dropped in the vicinity of the capital city, Tbilisi. Instead, Russian viewers have been shown horrific scenes of destruction in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, as well as interviews with distraught refugees. They relate stories of Georgian troops throwing grenades or running over civilians with tanks, and deliberately flooding basements to force women and children out of safe havens.

Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks - John Markoff, New York Times

Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace. Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks in Lexington noticed a stream of data directed at Georgian government sites containing the message: “win+love+in+Rusia.” Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests - known as distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attacks - that overloaded and effectively shut down Georgian servers. Researchers at Shadowserver, a volunteer group that tracks malicious network activity, reported that the Web site of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had been rendered inoperable for 24 hours by multiple DDOS attacks. They said the command and control server that directed the attack was based in the United States and had come online several weeks before it began the assault.

US Completes Georgian Troop Redeployment; US Contingent Remains - AFPS

The United States has redeployed some 2,000 Georgian troops from Iraq to their home country, where a contingent of fewer than 100 American military personnel remain, a Defense Department spokesman said today. Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman said the United States, meanwhile, is prepared to provide humanitarian aid to Georgia, where clashes with Russia broke out last week in the breakaway region of South Ossetia in the former Soviet republic and escalated over following days. No humanitarian missions currently are under way, he added. American C-17s began shuttling the brigade of Georgian forces Aug. 10 and completed the redeployment yesterday, Whitman said. The US-provided transport adhered to an agreement that US and Georgian government officials arranged before Russian tanks and troops crossed Georgia’s border on Aug. 8. “We are fulfilling our agreement with the Georgian government that in an emergency we would assist them in redeploying their troops,” Whitman said yesterday. “We are honoring that commitment, and we are following through with that.” A contingent of fewer than 100 US military personnel remains in Georgia, the Pentagon spokesman told reporters today. Some American personnel left yesterday, but the forces currently there are safe and accounted for, he added. “They are not involved in the conflict,” he said, “but they are remaining there for now.”

United Nations Steps Up Aid To Georgia - Lisa Schlein, Voice of America

United Nations and International agencies are stepping up aid to victims of the conflict between Georgia and Russia that erupted Friday in the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The agencies say lack of access to South Ossetia is the biggest problem they face. The aid is starting to flow into Georgia. The UN refugee agency reports a plane it chartered carrying relief supplies for civilians landed at the airport in the capital, Tblisi, Tuesday morning. Spokesman Ron Redmond says the plane carried 34 tons of tents, jerry cans, blankets and kitchen sets from UNHCR's central emergency stockpile in Dubai. "It is the first UN humanitarian flight to reach Georgia since the fighting in the breakaway region of south Ossetia erupted on Friday," he said. "A second UNHCR flight is scheduled tomorrow from Copenhagen, another of our central logistical hubs. The two flights will provide more than 70 tons of aid supplies for up to 30,000 people and will augment other relief items already distributed by UNHCR from its warehouses in Georgia." Latest figures provided by Georgian and Russian government sources estimate nearly 100,000 people have been uprooted as a result of the fighting in South Ossetia. UN aid workers report up to 80 percent of the population in the Georgian border town of Gori has left following heavy bombardment by Russian aircraft.

Russia: Pause for Thought - The Times editorial

By launching its first invasion of a foreign country since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia jeopardised its status as a rational actor on the world stage. Yesterday it salvaged that status. The ceasefire announced by President Medvedev after five days of fighting in South Ossetia will help to avert a full-scale humanitarian disaster in the Caucasus. It has created a breathing space for peace talks now under way in Moscow. It leaves President Saakashvili of Georgia humbled internationally even if he remains popular at home, and Moscow confident that its hegemony in South Ossetia and nearby Abkhazia will not be challenged again for the foreseeable future. From the Kremlin's standpoint, it does more: Mr Medvedev and his implacable Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, can now claim to their more credulous supporters that in the struggle for Georgia's borderlands they hold the moral high ground.

Bush and Georgia - Wall Street Journal editorial

On June 13, 1948, the day after the Soviet Union took the first step in its blockade of Berlin, US General Lucius Clay sent a cable to Washington making the case for standing up to the Soviets. "We are convinced that our remaining in Berlin is essential to our prestige in Germany and in Europe. Whether for good or bad, it has become a symbol of the American intent." The Berlin Airlift began 13 days later. Sixty years on, US credibility is again on the line as the Bush Administration stumbles to respond to the Russian invasion of Georgia. So far the Administration has been missing in action, to put it mildly. The strategic objective is twofold: to prevent Moscow from going further to topple Georgia's democratic government in the coming days, and to deter future Russian aggression.

What Does Russia Want? - Washington Times editorial

Russia agreed on Tuesday to halt military action in Georgia. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are merely stalling as they accept to halt military action but demand the withdrawal of Georgian troops from South Ossetia and Abkhazia. They are also calling for regime change. The Kremlin seeks to undermine Georgia and gradually gain dominance over the nations that were part of the former Soviet Union. The Russians are on the march toward imperialism and must be stopped. The recent hostilities have been carefully engineered by Moscow over the course of many years. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia remained within the sovereign territory of Georgia but were autonomous. In March 2008, when South Ossetia declared independence, only Russia offered recognition. By supporting independence movements in Georgia, Russia has attempted to ensure that its Georgian neighbor would have a rocky transition to democracy and Western integration. Moscow has stepped up its attempt to undermine Georgia since the latter has sought to become a NATO member.

Refresh Georgia's 'Rose Revolution' - Christian Science Monitor editorial

Moscow's announcement Tuesday that it would halt its five-day invasion of Georgia came within 24 hours of President Bush's demand for an end to this "brutal" Russian offensive. Did an implied US threat make the difference? There's one way to find out. In his statement Monday, Mr. Bush drew a bright line around what matters most to the US in Georgia – and it's not the oil pipeline that runs through this strategic nation. Nor is it Georgia's claim to the disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are the size of Puerto Rico. Neither is it forcing Russia to accept yet another country near its border as a NATO member. No, it was with poignant symbolism that Bush made his main point in the Rose Garden of the White House. He insisted that Georgia's 2003 "rose revolution" not be overthrown and a Russian puppet installed either by force or coercion. He warned against the apparent Russian attempt to depose Georgia's "duly elected government."

Mixed Messages and Unheeded Warnings - Cooper and Shanker, New York Times

One month ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia, for a high-profile visit that was planned to accomplish two very different goals. During a private dinner on July 9, Ms. Rice’s aides say, she warned President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia not to get into a military conflict with Russia that Georgia could not win. “She told him, in no uncertain terms, that he had to put a non-use of force pledge on the table,” according to a senior administration official who accompanied Ms. Rice to the Georgian capital. But publicly, Ms. Rice struck a different tone, one of defiant support for Georgia in the face of Russian pressure. “I’m going to visit a friend and I don’t expect much comment about the United States going to visit a friend,” she told reporters just before arriving in Tbilisi, even as Russian jets were conducting intimidating maneuvers over South Ossetia. In the five days since the simmering conflict between Russia and Georgia erupted into war, Bush administration officials have been adamant in asserting that they warned the government in Tbilisi not to let Moscow provoke it into a fight - and that they were surprised when their advice went unheeded.

Welcome Back To the Great Game - Melik Kaylan, Wall Street Journal

Last year, President Mikheil Saakashvili invited me along on a helicopter flight to see Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's capital, from the air. We viewed it at some distance to avoid Russian antiaircraft missiles manned by Russian personnel. He pointed out a lone hilltop sprinkled with houses some 10 miles inside Georgian territory - scarcely even a town. Much of the population, namely the Georgians, had long ago been purged by Russian-backed militias, leaving behind a rump population of Ossetian farmers and Russian security forces posing as Ossetians. "We have offered them everything," he said, "language rights, land rights, guaranteed power in parliament, anything they want, and they would take it, if the Kremlin would let them." Moscow's thin pretense of protecting an ethnic group provided just enough cover for Georgia's timorous friends in the West to ignore increasing Russian provocations over the past few years. Moscow, it now seems, intends to "protect" large numbers of Georgians too - by occupying and killing them if that's what it takes - and prevent them from building their own history and pursuing their democratic destiny, as it has for almost two centuries.

Another Hard Landing? - Eugene Rumer, Washington Post

Russia's victory in Georgia is payback for years of geopolitical irrelevance, for Moscow's retreat from Eastern Europe and from the Soviet Union, for Western finger-wagging at Russian transgressions at home and abroad. Russia is back: Its gross domestic product has increased from $200 billion in 1999 to $1.2 trillion in 2007. Moscow has more money from oil and gas exports than it knows what to do with. The Russian military is showing off its newfound strength, punishing the Georgians for their sins, the greatest of which is forgetting in whose back yard they live. Moscow has warned Poland and the Czech Republic not to deploy US missile defense components on their territories. The Kremlin has also told Washington that it should mind its own business.

The Pandora's Box of Sovereignty - Meaney and Mylonas. LA Times

For the coolest composure while going to war, the gold medal goes to Vladimir Putin. The Russian prime minister maintained his characteristic calm during Friday's Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing - giving a firm salute to the Russian athletes marching by - while he arranged for another kind of march into the disputed territory of South Ossetia. It's clear that Putin considers this payback time, not only for Georgia, Russia's meddlesome neighbor to the south, but for President Bush. In February, Bush and most European leaders backed the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, which Putin vociferously opposed. Don't worry, assured US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying, "Kosovo cannot be seen as precedent for any other situation in the world today." But precedent is exactly what it set. Just as the West wanted to shield Kosovo from Serbian domination, so Putin hopes to free South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgian interference and keep them in the Russian orbit of influence. Thus far, he has succeeded by rolling out tanks while the West has paid only lip service to the territorial integrity of Georgia.

Strutting Russia is Heading For a Fall - Richard Beeston, The Times

Rarely have Russians had such cause to celebrate their hero. One minute Vladimir Putin was in Beijing mixing with Russian athletes on the opening day of the Olympics. Moments later he reappeared in the Caucasus, sleeves rolled up and directing a victorious counter-attack against his arch-rival Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian President. Fleeing refugees and wounded civilians were comforted. Generals saluted smartly as they were sent off to battle. No one was left in any doubt that Mr Putin, rather than the absent President Medvedev, was still firmly in charge of the country. In the space of only five days the Russian Prime Minister succeeded not only in smashing the Georgian Army but also teaching all those in the “near abroad”, as Russia refers to its neighbours in the former Soviet empire, a painful lesson about challenging Moscow in its own backyard.

First Yukos, Then Georgia - Holman Jenkins Jr., Wall Street Journal

Now the world is getting an idea of what a "war for oil" really looks like. Few in the West appreciate the degree to which Vladimir Putin and the Soviet, er, Russian, elite subscribe to a prewar view of power relations and national greatness. Their view is not based on self-reproducing institutions and innovation and the power of trade, but on territory and resources -- lebensraum, as one of their intellectual progenitors called it. Whatever the pretexts and emotional resonances, the Republic of Georgia, transit territory for two important energy pipelines, was also a challenge to Mr. Putin's pursuit of power through control of energy supplies, especially for home heating, to Western Europe.

Puppet Medvedev Left Dangling - Bronwen Maddox, The Times

The body language said it all. Dmitri Medvedev, Russia’s so-called President, meeting the French President in Moscow yesterday, looked tense and subdued, a pale face above a dead-white shirt, sitting cramped in one of the Kremlin’s gilt chairs as Nicolas Sarkozy took up the airspace with expansive hand gestures. In contrast, Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister (the role he chose when appointing Medvedev as his successor), has been relaxed, leaning back in his chair, using long answers to shut out other speakers in chairing his Cabinet and in public appearances. The past five days have answered the puzzle of who is running Russia. Putin is clearly in charge; Medvedev has seemed like his puppet. Putin flew from the Olympic Games to the border of South Ossetia, an action man dashing in to comfort terrified civilians. Medvedev has been confined to the Kremlin.

Moment of Truth on Georgia - Ariel Cohen, Washington Times

As the Olympic Games opened, the tragic and ominous conflict between the Republic of Georgia and Russia erupted as well. Moscow responded with overwhelming force to the Georgian fire on Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetian separatists. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flew from the Beijing Olympics to Vladikavkaz, taking control of the military operations. Thus, Mr. Putin sidelined his successor Dmitry Medvedev, and left no doubt as to who is in charge. The 58th Russian Army of the North Caucasus Military District rolled into South Ossetia, reinforced by the 76th Airborne "Pskov" Division. It now seized the military base in Senaki, just 50 miles from the strategic port of Poti, which came under severe bombardment.

Russia's Aim in Georgia was Strategic - Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

Russia appears to be rolling back its military incursion into neighboring Georgia. But that's probably because what Russia wanted wasn't territory at all. Instead, experts say, by sending in its troops Russia seized the upper hand strategically in dealing with countries around its periphery. "They don't want to rebuild the Soviet Union, but they do want a sphere of influence," said Steven Pifer, a former deputy assistant secretary of State and ambassador to Ukraine. Russia has itched to strike at southern neighbor Georgia's brash, Western-oriented leader, President Mikheil Saakashvili. And Saakashvili gave the Kremlin an opportunity when he sent troops into the separatist region of South Ossetia last week in an effort to reassert Georgia's sovereignty. US officials have called Russia's response disproportionate because its forces did not just expel Georgian troops from South Ossetia, but drove deep into Georgian territory and bombed Georgian targets.

Russian Triumph Leaves Georgia Uncertain - Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor

There is an air of satisfaction in Moscow over what appears to be a crushing Russian victory in its muscular, five-day long intervention to preserve the quasi-independence of South Ossetia and weaken Georgia's West-leaning President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose drive to take his tiny country into NATO has deeply alarmed the Kremlin. "The aggressor has been punished and has incurred very significant losses," said Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, who ordered an end to Russian combat operations on Tuesday just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy was arriving in Moscow to press for a cease-fire. But in Georgia, the mood was grim and uncertain. The country's pro-Western spirit, confirmed in a referendum earlier this year, when more than 70 percent of Georgians supported immediate NATO membership, may have been dampened by what some see as a lack of support in their hour of crisis.

Georgia and the American Cowboy - Cluadia Rosett, National Review

With Russia’s military blasting its way into neighboring Georgia, this sure seems like a moment when the world could use a democratic super-cop. Good luck. Right now, we don’t have one. America effectively resigned from the much-reviled role of lone superpower five years ago, after toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2002, and defying the Oil-for-Food devotees at the United Nations to overthrow the tyranny of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003. Since then, President Bush, to his credit, has stuck with the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq - a display of determination and firepower which goes far to explain why almost seven years have passed since September 11 without another major attack on US shores. But in dealing with other major threats to the free world, the White House has hung up its spurs, turned in its badge, and handed over the remaining items in the global-security portfolio to the soft-power ministrations of our globe-trotting diplomats. According to the State Department’s website, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice since opening up this diplomatic campaign full throttle in 2005 has made 76 trips to 79 countries, spending 2,017 hours on the road, in the air - whatever. Diplomacy has become a marathon end in itself.

Saakashvili Finds Support in Midst of War - Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post

On the first day of the war, as he spoke on television about his country's attempt to retake a breakaway territory, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had a little smile on his face. As the situation became more grave, so did he, and in the following days he seemed at turns stressed, tearful, defiant and solemn. In Gori, the scene of heavy Russian bombardment, he appeared in a flak jacket, trailed by camera crews, and on Monday night, when Tbilisi residents thought their turn was next, his was the demeanor of a captain going down with the ship. Georgia has always been the most theatrical of nations, and Saakashvili - "Misha" to his people - is the most theatrical of presidents. He swept into power four years ago as a revolutionary, promising to stamp out corruption and bring economic stability, and in some cases he delivered. But the issue of two breakaway regions was perhaps the most emotional - and quixotic - of his causes. It also came with the possibility for the most serious consequences.

Authoritarian Divisions - Paul Kelly, The Australian

As China uses the Olympic Games to showcase the return of its civilisational power, Russia has launched an attack on Georgia to remind the world that it will reclaim its historic influence by resort to force. Beijing's opening ceremony was a fusion of Confucian past and glorious future and, above all, a message that China's greatness is an irresistible force of the 21st century. At the same time Vladimir Putin claimed for the Russian nation the soul of Alexander Solzhenitsyn (lest it be seized by the West) bringing that indomitable witness against Soviet tyranny into the bosom of the motherland. History, in case you missed the point, has not ended. China recruits the soft power of the Olympics to advance its cause and obliterate the memory of much of its 20th-century humiliation. Russia deploys the hard power of military invasion to lay claim to Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, and destroy its putative alliance with the West. Russia and China have a relationship born in mistrust and mired in rivalry, yet they take mutual heart from their contemporary experience: the success of the autocratic state.

Saakashvili: Man Who Lost it All - Nick Allen, Daily Telegraph

When he burst on to television screens across the world last week, speaking perfect English, Mikheil Saakashvili looked every inch the charismatic New York-trained lawyer that he is. Known to friends as "Misha" the cosmopolitan 40-year-old is unquestionably brilliant, speaks half a dozen languages and has a Dutch wife he met in Paris. But Mr Saakashvili has handed Russia a victory it could scarcely have dreamed of - his decision to invade South Ossetia has left his army humiliated and he could soon be fighting for his political life with no prospect of any meaningful help from his Western allies. How did he make such a catastrophic blunder?

Moscow’s Sinister Brilliance - Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

The long-suffering Russian people resent the loss of global influence and empire, but not necessarily the Soviet Union and its gulags that once ensured such stature. The invasion restores a sense of Russian nationalism and power to its populace without the stink of Stalinism, and is indeed cloaked as a sort of humanitarian intervention on behalf of beleaguered Ossetians. There will be no Russian demonstrations about an “illegal war,” much less nonsense about “blood for oil,” but instead rejoicing at the payback of an uppity former province that felt its Western credentials somehow trumped Russian tanks. How ironic that the Western heartthrob, the old Marxist Mikhail Gorbachev, is now both lamenting Western encouragement of Georgian “aggression,” while simultaneously gloating over the return of Russian military daring.

US Limited in Georgia Crisis - Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor

Russia's blitz into the former Soviet republic of Georgia has exposed starkly the limits of US military power and geopolitical influence in the era following the invasion of Iraq. Georgia is one of the closest US allies in Eastern Europe. President Mikheil Saakashvili has visited the White House three times in the last four years. Yet this warm relationship did not stop the Kremlin from unleashing a ferocious military response after Georgian troops entered the separatist province of South Ossetia. US efforts to expand Western influence and spread democracy along Russia's borders may now be threatened. US relations with Russia itself, at the least, are in flux.

Conflict May Spark New US Policy Battle - Barnes and Spiegel, LA Times

Other than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, few foreign policy initiatives have gotten more diplomatic attention from the Bush administration recently than thawing its increasingly chilly relationship with Russia. Twice over the last 10 months, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have been sent on joint missions to convince the Kremlin that it should cooperate on a variety of fronts, including missile defense and nuclear proliferation. But the conflict in Georgia this week has left efforts to engage Russia in disarray, and there are increasing signs that administration hard-liners are using the crisis to reassert their view that Moscow should be isolated. Vice President Dick Cheney's declaration Saturday that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered" was seen by some experts as the first salvo of what could be a new battle over administration policy.

Putin the Terrible - Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Real Clear Politics

In "Rebuilding Russia," published as the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote that the "awakening Russian national self-awareness has to a large extent been unable to free itself of great-power thinking and of imperial delusions ... it has taken over from the communists the fraudulent and contrived notion of Soviet patriotism." As all prescient statements, it was a shrewd reading of the present, not the future. The Russian invasion of Georgia is a powerful confirmation of Solzhenitsyn's words. Of course, one could reverse his argument: Soviet imperialism was a continuation, not an antecedent, of Russian nationalism. Vladimir Putin and his stooge, President Dmitry Medvedev, have revived a tradition of Russian expansionism that dates back to Ivan the Terrible. The invasion of Georgia echoes Russia's annexation of that country in 1801 and again in 1921, when the Soviets crushed a short-lived Georgian independence.

Beyond Trust Verify - Barnes and Tuohy, National Review

By the sounds of artillery, tanks, and strategic bombers on August 8, world attention was suddenly wrenched away from the brightly elaborate Olympic spectacle in China to the obscure mountain valleys of Georgia. Yet despite the considerable resources immediately brought to bear by governments and media organizations alike on trying to figure out what became revealed by the scale of those explosions to be the largest interstate conflict to reach Europe since World War II, the basic facts of the conflict - to say nothing about questions of extent, fault, or potential consequences - have remained masked by what has been described as a “cloud of war” hanging over the Caucasus. Of course, in our globalized age of information, there was never any possibility of an information blackout - on the contrary, seemingly credible news reports came out of Georgia on an hourly basis claiming that, for example, Tbilisi International Airport has been bombed, or that Georgian troops in the breakaway South Ossetian republic's “capital” of South Ossetia have ignored several ceasefires announced by their president. Yet the chaos of the war is obscuring the nature of the conflict not due to a lack of reporting, but paradoxically to an overabundance of it - for on every key diplomatic or military move, news reports have been directly and mutually contradictory.

Back in the USSR - John O'Sullivan, New York Post

Beyond making money for the siloviki, South Ossetia exists for the purpose of destabilizing pro-Western Georgia. Its sporadic shelling of nearby Georgian villages provoked Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili into a seemingly catastrophic military response. But if Georgia had taken no action, Russia would have incorporated the breakaway province by degrees - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had already awarded Russian passports to South Ossetian residents. Both trapdoors led to the same result: Russian expansion, the punishment of Georgia for daring to be an ally of the West - and the annexation of South Ossetia, now occupied by Russian "peacekeepers." Yes, it's "Back in the USSR," boys.

Back in the USSR - Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe

Henry Kissinger used to say that while it can be dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, to be a friend is fatal. The people of South Vietnam learned that bitter lesson when the United States abandoned them in 1975. The Poles learned it after Yalta, the Hungarian freedom fighters learned it in 1956, the Cubans learned it at the Bay of Pigs. And tens of thousands of Iraqis learned it in 1991, when at the urging of George H.W. Bush they rose against Saddam Hussein, only to be slaughtered when American support never materialized. We can now add Georgia to that list. The current President Bush has been a vocal champion of the young democracy in the former Soviet republic. He lauded the Rose Revolution that swept Mikheil Saakashvili to power, backs Georgia's bid to join NATO, and traveled to Tbilisi in 2005 to give his "pledge to the Georgian people that you've got a solid friend in America." In return, the Georgians firmly aligned themselves with the United States, sending troops to fight alongside ours in Iraq and Afghanistan and even naming a main road in Tbilisi after Bush. At the White House in March, Saakashvili effusively thanked the president for having "really put Georgia firmly on the world's freedom map."

How the West Botched Georgia - Ronald Asmus, The New Republic

The guns around Tbilisi have now fallen silent. Efforts are underway to finalize a truce between Russia and Georgia to end Moscow's bloody invasion. It is time for the West to look in the mirror and ask: What went wrong? How did this disaster happen? Make no mistake. While this is first and foremost a disaster for the people and government of Georgia, it is also a disaster for the West - and for the US in particular. After all, Georgia was, in a fairly basic sense, our project. The Rose Revolution was inspired by American ideals--and prodding. Many of its leaders were Western-educated and cut their teeth in US-sponsored NGOs. The radical reforms carried out by Mikheil Saakashvili and his team of young democrats drew on the American experience. Georgia's NATO drive was inspired by the US push to enlarge NATO to Central and Eastern Europe. Three years ago, President George W. Bush stood in Tbilisi's Freedom Square and told Georgians that American would support them as they traveled their road to freedom. Tbilisi's boulevard to the airport is named after him.

US Launches Airlift to Aid Georgia[

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McCain Adviser Got Money From Georgia

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Georgian President's Claims Raise Eyebrows

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Georgia Puts UN in Cold War Mode

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US Army Deserter Ordered Deported From Canada

Despite Truce, Russians Take Gori - Bahrampour and Finn, Washington Post

A day after Russia agreed to stop its offensive and pull its troops out of Georgian territory, Russian forces took over the frontline Georgian city of Gori on Wednesday, seized munitions at Georgian military bases and set up positions along the country's main east-west highway. Paramilitary fighters accompanying the troops looted homes and stole cars, witnesses said. The actions far inside undisputed Georgian territory underlined the uncertainties of efforts to end the war and drew a sharp rebuke from President Bush. "Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis," he said at the White House, announcing that US military planes and ships would begin ferrying humanitarian aid into the beleaguered country.

Georgia Says Russians Pulling Out of Gori - Associated Press

Russian troops began pulling out Thursday from this hub on Georgia's main east-west highway, Georgia's Interior Ministry said, where the soldiers' presence raised fears that Russia would challenge a shaky cease-fire agreement. The strategically located city is 15 miles south of South Ossetia, the separatist region where Russian and Georgian forces fought a brutal five-day battle. Russian troops entered Gori on Wednesday, after the two sides signed the cease-fire that called for their forces to pull back to the positions they held before the fighting started.

Plan Offers Russia a Rationale to Advance - Andrew Kramer, New York Times

It was nearly 2 a.m. on Wednesday when President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced he had accomplished what seemed virtually impossible: Persuading the leaders of Georgia and Russia to agree to a set of principles that would stop the war. Handshakes and congratulations were offered all around. But by the time the sun was up, Russian tanks were advancing again, this time taking positions around the strategically important city of Gori, in central Georgia. It soon became clear that the six-point deal not only failed to slow the Russian advance, but it also allowed Russia to claim that it could push deeper into Georgia as part of so-called additional security measures it was granted in the agreement. Mr. Sarkozy, according to a senior Georgian official who witnessed the negotiations, also failed to persuade the Russians to agree to any time limit on their military action.

Bush Squares Up to Putin - Tom Baldwin, The Times

President Bush dispatched US military hardware to the heart of the Caucasus yesterday and warned Russia that it could be frozen out of international bodies as punishment for its aggression in Georgia. In his toughest criticism of Russia since becoming President, Mr Bush accused it of breaching the provisional ceasefire agreed with Georgia only 24 hours earlier. He cited intelligence showing that Russian troops had again taken the town of Gori and could threaten the capital, Tbilisi. He insisted that Moscow respect the former Soviet republic’s territorial integrity. There were also reports of Russian-backed militia in South Ossetia looting ethnic Georgian villages and killing inhabitants.

Bush Takes Tougher Stance - Spiegel and Barnes, Los Angeles Times

President Bush escalated the American response Wednesday to Russian military action in Georgia, ordering a humanitarian aid effort and dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the stricken region as Pentagon officials announced plans to rebuild the Georgian military. Speaking in the Rose Garden, Bush accused Russia of seizing territory in Georgia and continuing its military campaign despite agreeing to a cease-fire. The new words and actions from the White House came after sharp criticism from conservatives, including some in Georgia and the Bush administration, that his initial response was ineffectual.

US Has Few Options - Eggen and DeYoung, Washington Post

The Bush administration mixed strong rhetoric with modest action yesterday in response to Russia's continued military incursion in Georgia, warning that Moscow's international aspirations are threatened if it does not honor a negotiated cease-fire in the conflict. President Bush announced the start of a humanitarian aid program for Georgia using US military airplanes and ships, although officials said the effort so far includes only two scheduled flights. One shipment arrived later yesterday and another is to land today. He also dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a diplomatic trip that will take her to Paris and then to Georgia's capital of Tbilisi to show "America's unwavering support."

Bush, Sending Aid, Demands That Moscow Withdraw - New York Times

President Bush sent American troops to Georgia on Wednesday to oversee a “vigorous and ongoing” humanitarian mission, in a direct challenge to Russia’s display of military dominance over the region. His action came after Russian soldiers moved into two strategic Georgian cities in what he and Georgian officials called a violation of the cease-fire Russia agreed to earlier in the day. Mr. Bush demanded that Russia abide by the cease-fire and withdraw its forces or risk its place in “the diplomatic, political, economic and security structures of the 21st century.” It was his strongest warning yet of potential retaliation against Russia over the conflict.

Bush Warns Russia to Honor Cease-Fire - Eggen and Branigin, Washington Post

President Bush today warned Russia to honor a cease-fire agreement in its conflict with Georgia, saying that reports of ongoing military actions by Moscow "raise serious questions about its intentions" and threaten its standing in the world. In a brief statement in the Rose Garden at the White House, Bush said he is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Paris for negotiations over the conflict, and then to Tbilisi to "convey America's unwavering support for Georgia's democratic government." A massive humanitarian relief effort is also underway, using US military planes and ships, Bush said.

Bush Sends Aid to Occupied Georgia - Ward and Hearn, Washington Times

President Bush dispatched US military forces Wednesday to the small Caucasus nation of Georgia to deliver "humanitarian aid" to the Western-leaning nation that is partly occupied by Russian troops. Mr. Bush also sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a diplomatic mission to France and then to Georgia to "rally the free world at the defense of a free Georgia." Miss Rice departed for Paris on Wednesday evening. The president spoke to reporters at the White House with Miss Rice on his right and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on his left, and said he had asked Mr. Gates to "begin a humanitarian mission to the people of Georgia headed by the United States military."

Rice Warns Russia of Isolation - Daily Telegraph

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, has threatened Russia with international isolation unless it keeps to a peace deal with Georgia brokered by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President. As she was despatched for Tblisi by George W Bush, in a strong show of US support for Georgia, Ms Rice said Russian troops' violations of the truce since the agreement was reached have "only served to deepen the isolation into which Russia is moving", as Moscow confirmed its troops remain in the state. There is a "very strong, growing sense that Russia is not behaving like the kind of international partner that it has said that it wants to be," said Ms Rice, who will meet Mr Sarkozy before holding talks with Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian President. "We expect Russia to meet its commitment to cease all military activities in Georgia."

Georgia, Russia Talks Break Down - Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times

Talks between Georgians and Russians over the handover of Gori suddenly broke down after it appeared Russians were beginning to leave the town. Georgian special forces, with M-16s raised, charged toward the checkpoint at the outskirts of Gori and protected by the Russians. The Russians took up their positions and an intense standoff ensued. Suddenly, a half-dozen Russian tanks pulled up from the city of Gori to the checkpoint and joined in the confrontation. No shots were fired. Russians and allied Ossetian militias retained control of Gori despite the peace agreement that required them to leave the town. Russians also barred United Nations vehicles from entering the town.

Saakashvili: US Ties as ‘Turning Point’ - Chivers and Kulish, New York Times

On Monday, President Mikheil Saakashvili, his army in retreat and his Western allies still surprised by the intensity of the Russian attack, was the very picture of vulnerability, dodging Russian military jets. By Wednesday he seemed an almost preternaturally reinvigorated man, once again raising the temperature in Georgia’s bitter disagreements with Russia, and invoking special ties with American democracy and freedom. Moments after President Bush appeared at the Rose Garden to say that the Pentagon would begin a humanitarian aid mission to support Georgia, Mr. Saakashvili was on the phone with a Western reporter, talking fast. “This is a turning point,” he said. Soon he appeared on national television, his tousled hair combed back flat and wearing a freshly pressed suit, assuring his country that the worst had passed. No matter that Russian troops were 30 miles away, milling on the road outside the capital, meeting no resistance.

Georgians, Bewildered and Broken - Megan Stack, Los Angeles Times

The first Russian tanks rumbled past in the morning, witnesses said, startling the townspeople and then drifting away as casually as they had arrived. By afternoon, the tanks were back in a haze of smoke and dust. Russian soldiers lounged on top, sprawled in their fatigues, shutting down the roads out of the city. Russia and Georgia had signed a cease-fire agreement the night before, but it already seemed like an illusion. Wednesday was an ordeal of lawlessness, random violence and fear for exhausted Georgians. Bandits and militiamen roamed the streets of Gori and nearby villages, stopping cars at gunpoint and stripping passersby of their possessions. Russian tanks creaked off toward the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, violating the truce, before turning back. The smell of fire and rumors of atrocities drifted into town from Russian-controlled farmlands to the north.

Gori: Rumors of Plunder - Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post

Near a sign reading "J. Stalin's Home Country," Russian military vehicles lumbered along the highway, rifles pointing out from drivers' windows. Most of the soldiers inside looked stony-eyed at the civilian cars going past. But a few nodded and gave casual waves, as if their presence there were no big deal. It was a big deal for Alexander Lomaia, secretary of Georgia's National Security Council. Along with Estonian Ambassador Toomas Lukk, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and a group of Georgian and foreign journalists, he had come hoping to see for himself the place where hostile troops were said to be ravaging what was left of the city of Gori.

Russia Takes Gori - New York Times editorial

President Dmitri Medvedev promised European negotiators early Wednesday morning that Russia would halt its attacks on Georgia and begin withdrawing its troops. A few hours later, Russian tanks rolled into the strategic crossroads town of Gori - just 40 miles from Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. We’re not sure if that means Mr. Medvedev isn’t in charge or that he was lying to buy more time to push for the overthrow of Georgia’s democratically elected government. Either explanation is chilling.

Blaming Democracy - Washington Post editorial

You might think, at a moment such as this, that the moral calculus would be pretty well understood. Russian troops are occupying large swaths of Georgia, a tiny neighboring country, and sacking its military bases. Russian jets have roamed Georgian skies, bombing civilian and military targets alike. Russian ships are said to be controlling Georgia's port of Poti, while militia under Russia's control reportedly massacre Georgian civilians. Russian officials openly seek to depose Georgia's elected government. Yet, in Washington, the foreign policy sophisticates cluck and murmur that, after all, the Georgians should have known better than to chart an independent course -- and what was the Bush administration thinking when it encouraged them in their dangerous delusions? If the criticism is correct, a fundamental and generations-old tenet of American foreign policy is wrong, so we should be clear about what is at stake.

Bush Toughens Up - Wall Street Journal editorial

President Bush strengthened his response to Russia's invasion of Georgia yesterday, sending his Secretary of State to Paris and then on to Tbilisi, and dispatching C-17 transport aircraft with medicine and other humanitarian supplies to the besieged Georgian capital. We're delighted to hear it, as no doubt are the Georgians. With Russian tanks having taken the city of Gori and poised on the highway only an hour's drive from Tbilisi, even a humanitarian US presence will make Prime Minister Vladimir Putin think twice about a further escalation. Mr. Bush also toughened his rhetoric, warning that the US "and the world expect Russia to honor" its promise to stand down and withdraw. We should add that White House officials let us know they were less than delighted - the actual words were a tad more colorful - about our editorial yesterday suggesting that the Administration had been slow to respond to Russia's aggression. We'll let our readers decide if we gave US officials too little credit for their phone calls and other behind-the-scenes work.

Volley of Fire - The Times editorial

You have to strain quite hard to place women's beach volleyball in a context any more curious than the one it already inhabits, given that this is a sport played by four sleek women wearing bikinis the size of postage stamps (the maximum dimensions being ordained in the rules. Really). But yesterday's Olympic match between Russia and Georgia in Beijing may have managed it. Even as a Russian military convoy was trundling around Georgia, and as Georgia's leaders were wailing about the outrage of Russia's entry into a neighbouring sovereign state, the Russian team, kitted out in blue-and-white bikinis, were being knocked out of the tournament by the team representing Georgia, dressed in lipstick red. What words do you use to describe such a contrast - two nations at war on one side of the world, while simultaneously in sporting combat on the other? Odd? Absurd? Ironic? Or maybe rather heartening, providing evidence of the noble power of sport to heal bloody wounds created by headstrong warmongers? Possibly all of these.

How to Keep the Bear in its Cage - Daily Telegraph editorial

The most telling support for the beleaguered Georgian government has come from Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They, after all, have first-hand experience of living under the Russian boot. Elsewhere, America has taken the lead in denouncing the annexation by Moscow of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. George W. Bush, who visited Tbilisi in 2005, said he was dispatching his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to the Georgian capital, and yesterday saw the landing of the first American military aircraft, carrying humanitarian aid. Washington, along with Britain and France, had already cancelled joint military exercises with the Russians. The West must now spell out the cost to Vladimir Putin of his revanchism in former "Soviet space". The talks between the EU and Moscow on a new "strategic partnership" and meetings of the Nato-Russia Council should be put on hold. Russia should be expelled from the G8 and denied entry to the World Trade Organisation.

Does American Foreign Policy Have Teeth? - Washington Times editorial

The conflict in Georgia is raising troubling questions about American foreign policy in the region. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, America championed the transformation of the former nations within the Soviet Empire into independent, democratic republics. President Bush has gone further than any of his predecessors in seeking to overturn the long-held "spheres of influence" that had been established during the Cold War. The Bush administration has supported the integration of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and has promoted the establishment of a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland. These measures have been rightly championed as a means of establishing a new world order in which the nations that have been historically subjugated by Russia could embark on a path of self-determination and could enter the Western orbit. But are American good intentions enough? Mr. Bush now faces the supreme test of his policy, as Russia throws down the gauntlet.

We Are All Georgians - John McCain, Wall Street Journal

For anyone who thought that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the last week must have come as a startling wake-up call. After clashes in the Georgian region of South Ossetia, Russia invaded its neighbor, launching attacks that threaten its very existence. Some Americans may wonder why events in this part of the world are any concern of ours. After all, Georgia is a small, remote and obscure place. But history is often made in remote, obscure places. As Russian tanks and troops moved through the Roki Tunnel and across the internationally recognized border into Georgia, the Russian government stated that it was acting only to protect Ossetians. Yet regime change in Georgia appears to be the true Russian objective.

Savvy Foresight and Insight - Donald Lambro, Washington Times

When President Bush first met Russian President Vladimir Putin, he looked into his eyes and said he could trust him. About the same time, John McCain said, "when I look into his eyes, I see a K, a G and a B" - the acronym of the Soviet Union's Stalinist secret police for whom torture and murder was a form of recreation. Mr. McCain never trusted Mr. Putin. He believed the former KGB agent neither supported nor accepted the independence movement that swept Eastern Europe when the Evil Empire fell apart and ended up on the ash heap of history. When others were supporting Mr. Putin's bid for membership in the exclusive G-8 club of economic powers, Mr. McCain opposed it. Events have proven Mr. McCain right from the beginning. Mr. Putin has crushed dissent in Russia, dismantled a free press, thrown corporate executives in prison on trumped-up state charges, took control of the country's oil and gas industry, and eliminated anyone who got in his way. Now he seems bent on reconstructing the old Soviet Union through military might.

The West's Challenge - Mikheil Saakashvili, Washington Post

Russia's invasion of Georgia strikes at the heart of Western values and our 21st-century system of security. If the international community allows Russia to crush our democratic, independent state, it will be giving carte blanche to authoritarian governments everywhere. Russia intends to destroy not just a country but an idea. For too long, we all underestimated the ruthlessness of the regime in Moscow. Yesterday brought further evidence of its duplicity: Within 24 hours of Russia agreeing to a cease-fire, its forces were rampaging through Gori; blocking the port of Poti; sinking Georgian vessels; and - worst of all - brutally purging Georgian villages in South Ossetia, raping women and executing men. The Russian leadership cannot be trusted - and this hard reality should guide the West's response. Only Western peacekeepers can end the war.

Conflict Makes Clear Who Rules in Russia - Frederick Kunkle, Washington Post

There was little doubt about who was ruling Russia even before its armed incursion into Georgia this week. But the events of the past five days wiped away any pretense that President Dmitry Medvedev runs the country. The violence between Russia and the former Soviet republic, nearly coinciding with Medvedev's 100th day in office, has demonstrated how much control remains in the hands of his predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, analysts say.

Putin's Rules, or Ours - Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal

Is it only a coincidence that Vladimir Putin launched a tank invasion of Georgia inside the week that Alexander Solzhenitsyn died? It was said countless times that Solzhenitsyn's truth-telling began the collapse of Soviet communism. As Vladimir Putin watched his tanks threaten Tbilisi yesterday, he must have thought that the post-Solzhenitsyn world is fine with him. He and the men in his orbit are unimaginably rich for seeing the world through the bloodless eyes of a Saudi prince. Unburdened of the exhausting task of enforcing Soviet ideology, Putin's Russia got its hands around the energy-needy throats of Germans, the French, Italians and many other Europeans. London's clubs and the sunshiny resorts of Europe make for pleasant Russian playgrounds. Europe's natural-gas users will pay the tab forever.

How to Stop Putin - Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

The Russia-Georgia cease-fire brokered by France's president is less than meets the eye. Its terms keep moving as the Russian army keeps moving. Russia has since occupied Gori (appropriately, Stalin's birthplace), effectively cutting Georgia in two. The road to the capital, Tbilisi, is open, but apparently Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has temporarily chosen to seek his objectives through military pressure and Western acquiescence rather than by naked occupation. His objectives are clear. They go beyond detaching South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia and absorbing them into Russia. They go beyond destroying the Georgian army, leaving the country at Russia's mercy.

Russia's Big Caucasus Win - Marquand and Weir, Christian Science Monitor

In less than a week of military operations sparked by Georgia's assault on its breakaway province of South Ossetia, Moscow is emerging as the immediate winner. A still-stunned West is looking for ways to censure Russia for its "disproportionate" incursion into Georgia that has reshaped the strategic game in the Caucasus and beyond to Russia's great advantage. "If the Russians stop hostilities now, they will have redrawn the whole strategic situation in the Caucasus, to the detriment of the Americans," says François Heisbourg, special adviser to the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. "No one will invest in Georgia, in oil pipelines, in new ventures [there] now.... The game is over. In the new version of the Great Game, the Russians can cash in." The scope of the "victory" is substantial: Moscow controls territory and leverage, has incapacitated the Georgian military, denied Tblisi its much-hoped-for NATO status, and put the Georgian leader it despises - Mikheil Saakashvili - into a tough position.

Putin's Mastery Checkmates the West - Michael Binyon, The Times

The cartoon images have shown Russia as an angry bear, stretching out a claw to maul Georgia. Russia is certainly angry, and, like a beast provoked, has bared its teeth. But it is the wrong stereotype. What the world has seen last week is a brilliant and brutal display of Russia's national game, chess. And Moscow has just declared checkmate. Chess is a slow game. One has to be ready to ignore provocations, lose a few pawns and turn the hubris of others into their own entrapment. For years there has been rising resentment within Russia. Some of this is inevitable: the loss of empire, a burning sense of grievance and the fear that in the 1990s, amid domestic chaos and economic collapse, Russia's views no longer mattered.

On the Road to Tbilisi - Denis Boyles, National Review

Georgia’s error was tactical in taking the Russian bait and moving into South Ossetia. Georgia’s sin, however, was wanting to be a part of the West, something Russia won’t easily permit. Putin obviously has been watching what was once American strength in Iraq has turned to weakness everywhere else on the planet, including especially in the US itself where polarization is now so complete that a Republican president couldn’t declare war on litter without eliciting a pacifist response from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The Russians didn’t kill everybody in Georgia, as they could have if they’d wished. So that’s a victory. And Georgia still stands, although now more as an example to the rest of Eastern Europe what an alliance with a paralyzed US really means. So as cynical as all the posturing on Georgia’s behalf in Europe may be, it’s a lot more inspiring than Condoleezza Rice’s waif-like “statements” about Russia’s reputation and W’s brow-furrowing utterances of the obvious.

Russia vs. Georgia - Herman Pirchner Jr., Washington Times

Russia chose to fight American-armed Georgia over the territory of South Ossetia - a piece of land the size of Rhode Island and containing only 70,000 people. Why? And what are the implications for the United States and Russia's neighbors? In past centuries, South Ossetia has been part of both the Russian and Georgian empires. And both countries still covet its territory. Although the dust has not yet settled, Russia won and once again controls South Ossetia. It won because it is stronger and because no outside force would seriously contemplate sending troops to help Georgia fight Russia. Russia's onslaught has shattered any illusions that Georgia may have harbored about the military and diplomatic benefits of its friendship with the West. Also gone is the notion that NATO could offer full membership to Georgia without risking confrontation with Russia. For both these reasons, Georgia is now less likely to become a member of the Atlantic alliance.

Confronting the Aggression - David Phillips, Washington Times

Russia's insidious provocations of Georgia were calculated to create a conflict that would advance Russia's goals: undermine Georgia's pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili, scuttle Georgia's NATO prospects and control energy exports from the Caspian Sea to Western markets. Now Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants Mr. Saakashvili to stand trial for war crimes. Rather than settling scores, the first order of business is to provide for Georgia's war victims. Georgia's crisis was driven as much by personalities as policy differences. Mr. Putin detested Mr. Saakashvili from the start. Immediately following the 2003 Rose Revolution, Mr. Putin launched a propaganda and harassment campaign that sought to destabilize Georgia and delegitimize Mr. Saakashvili. To this end, Russia imposed sanctions suspending imports of Georgian wine, water, fruits and vegetables. Russia also cut off transport links, suspended postal service, and expelled thousands of ethnic Georgians working as labor migrants. Russia undermined Georgia's sovereignty by inciting separatists from Abkhazia and South Ossetia and providing diplomatic and military support.

Conflict Narrows Oil Options for West - Jad Mouawad, New York Times

When the main pipeline that carries oil through Georgia was completed in 2005, it was hailed as a major success in the United States policy to diversify its energy supply. Not only did the pipeline transport oil produced in Central Asia, helping move the West away from its dependence on the Middle East, but it also accomplished another American goal: it bypassed Russia. American policy makers hoped that diverting oil around Russia would keep the country from reasserting control over Central Asia and its enormous oil and gas wealth and would provide a safer alternative to Moscow’s control over export routes that it had inherited from Soviet days. The tug-of-war with Moscow was the latest version of the Great Game, the 19th-century contest for dominance in the region.

Fly, Tigers - John Barnes, National Review

An American ally is under brutal attack from the air by a militarily superior aggressor. But the ally is physically distant from the United States and, in some ways, politically problematic. A complicating factor is that the United States is and wants to remain - officially at least - at peace with the aggressor. Aside from offering its sympathy, what can the United States do? We’ve been here before. In 1940, the American ally under assault wasn’t Georgia, but nationalist China, and the aggressor wasn’t Russia, but imperial Japan. Prodded by Claire Chennault, a retired US Army aviator who was employed by Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek as an air adviser, President Franklin D. Roosevelt in early 1941 authorized the formation of the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG). Its three squadrons were intended to keep the Japanese army air force at bay until sufficient numbers of Chinese pilots could be trained and equipped to take on the task themselves.

Strike Shows The Power Of the Pipeline - Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post

It was surely not lost on Russia's bully in chief, Vladimir Putin, that the oil giant BP decided to shut down the pipeline that runs through parts of Georgia controlled by Russian troops. Indeed, that was one of the aims of the cross-border incursion. Putin understands better than anyone that oil and gas are the source of Russia's resurgence as a military and economic power and his own control over the Russian government and key sectors of its economy. It is oil and gas that provide the money to maintain Russia's powerful military, along with a vast internal security apparatus and network of government-controlled enterprises that allow the president-turned-premier to maintain his iron grip on the levers of political and economic power.

Echo of Cold War - Richard Beeston, The Times

Sending US forces into Georgia, albeit to deliver humanitarian supplies, represents the most serious military escalation between Washington and Moscow since the end of the Cold War. Not since British paratroopers came nose to nose with Russian soldiers at Pristina airport in 1999 have the old East-West rivalries resurfaced in such explosive form. Back then, the situation was defused by General Sir Mike Jackson, the British commander, who refused to confront the Russians and “start World War III”. It is to be hoped that the commanders of the US Navy and Air Force now leading their forces to Georgia will be equipped with the same diplomatic skills. Nevertheless, entering a new war zone is fraught with dangers. The US Navy’s task force will be challenging the Russian naval blockade of Georgia’s ports, while the giant US military cargo planes will be landing close to areas recently bombed by Russian warplanes. The Georgians tried to exploit the move last night by declaring that their ports and airports would be put under US military control, an offer the Pentagon quickly declined.

Georgia and the American Cowboy - Claudia Rosett, National Review

With Russia’s military blasting its way into neighboring Georgia, this sure seems like a moment when the world could use a democratic super-cop. Good luck. Right now, we don’t have one. America effectively resigned from the much-reviled role of lone superpower five years ago, after toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2002, and defying the Oil-for-Food devotees at the United Nations to overthrow the tyranny of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003. Since then, President Bush, to his credit, has stuck with the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq - a display of determination and firepower which goes far to explain why almost seven years have passed since September 11 without another major attack on US shores.

US Warns Russia but Readies Concessions

US Ties With Russia Being Reassessed, Bush Aides Say

US Demands Russia Ensures Georgian Port Access

McCain's Focus on Georgia Raises Question of Propriety

Rice Pushes to Modify Georgia Peace Deal

US: Russian Peacekeepers Get Wider Georgia Mandate

Russia's War With Georgia May Reopen US Rift With Europe

Russia, Georgia Negotiate Handover of Key Town

Russians: Enclaves Won't Revert to Georgia

Georgian Opposition Blames Saakashvili for War, Eyes New Elections

Russian Relations In Doubt, Gates Says - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

Russian behavior in Georgia has "called into question the entire premise" of relations between Washington and Moscow, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday, even as the Bush administration appeared willing to let Russia take its time removing its forces from disputed areas inside the former Soviet republic. Gates reported a sharp drop in Russian military activities and said troops seemed to be positioning themselves to depart Georgia proper, toward the separatist, pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He said a US military humanitarian-assessment team that arrived Wednesday will take 48 hours to determine how best to distribute aid. But US officials acknowledged late in the day that they were uncertain whether any significant Russian movement was underway.

Russia Actions Jeopardize Ties - Myers and Shanker, New York Times

Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has jolted the Bush administration’s relationship with Moscow, senior officials said Thursday, forcing a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia and jeopardizing talks on everything from halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals to cooperation on missiles defenses. The conflict punctuated a stark turnabout in the administration’s view of Vladimir V. Putin, the president turned prime minister whom President Bush has repeatedly described as a trustworthy friend. Now Mr. Bush’s aides complain that Russian officials have been misleading or at least evasive about Russia’s intentions in Georgia. Even as the conflict between Russia and Georgia appeared to ease on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said the Russian attack had forced a fundamental rethinking of the administration’s effort to forge “an ongoing and long-term strategic dialogue with Russia.”

Russians Leave, Then Return to Gori - Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post

Georgia remained in a state of uncertainty Thursday as Russian troops retreated from and then returned to the city of Gori and spent much of the day destroying or carrying away captured Georgian military equipment. Elsewhere in the country, Russian tanks and trucks rolled along country roads toward unknown destinations, watched by local people. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that Georgia could "forget about" ever regaining the two secessionist regions that are at the heart of the conflict. At the Kremlin, President Dmitry Medvedev warmly received the political leaders of the zones, which Georgia and the United States insist remain part of Georgia. Two days ago, Medvedev said Russian troops had ceased hostilities and would withdraw. Since then, his troops have moved erratically, heading in one direction and then veering off or reversing course.

Russia Vows to Support Two Enclaves - Clifford Levy, New York Times

Russia issued a rebuke to President Bush on Thursday over the conflict in neighboring Georgia, refusing an immediate withdrawal of its troops there, affirming its support for two separatist enclaves and warning the United States to avoid doing anything that would encourage its Georgian ally to reignite hostilities. In response, in the most pointed language yet from a Bush administration official, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates declared that Russia’s actions now required a full reassessment of administration efforts to create “an ongoing and long-term strategic dialogue with Russia.”

Russia Preparing for Georgia Withdrawal - Al Pessin, Voice of America

A top US military officer says Russian forces appear to be preparing to withdraw from Georgia, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the moves must continue or Russia will face serious long-term consequences in its relations with the United States and the West. The secretary says some consequences are already in order. The number two US military officer, General James Cartwright, says Russia has virtually stopped air activities over Georgia and is generally complying with promises to end hostilities. "It's difficult at the tactical level to know each and every engagement in each town," he said. "But, generally the forces are starting to move out of the city, particularly Gori, starting to consolidate their positions and get themselves into a position where they can start to back away toward the border." General Cartwright says a 12-member US military assessment team is working to determine whether roads, airports and seaports are clear to enable the delivery of relief supplies, with two planeloads already on the ground in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. But Secretary Gates said he sees "no prospect" of US forces getting involved in the conflict, saying the United States worked hard for 45 years to avoid war with the Soviet Union and Russia, and he sees no reason to change that policy now.

Saakashvili: Russia Occupies One-Third of Georgia - Voice of America

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says a convoy of Russian tanks pushing deeper into Georgia towards the second largest city, Kutaisi, has stopped. Mr. Saakashvili gave no details on the Russian tank movement. But he told CNN television Thursday that Russia currently occupies one-third of his country. He said the presence of Russian irregulars, armed men who are not full-time soldiers, is extremely worrying. He accuses them of looting and killing in ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia. Earlier, Russian tanks took up positions outside the strategic city of Gori after a stand-off with Georgian authorities who were trying to re-enter the abandoned town. The Georgians had refused to endorse a proposal for South Ossetian police to patrol Gori. It was not immediately clear if the stand-off has ended, but no shooting has been reported. Elsewhere, witnesses say Russian troops entered the undefended Black Sea port of Poti and took computers and other equipment from port facilities. US officials have accused Russia of disabling Georgian military installations.

Russians Refuse to Withdraw from Gori - Tony Halpin, The Times

It was a moment when the ceasefire between Russia and Georgia could have collapsed in a single nervous twitch of a soldier's trigger finger. Opposing troops came within a hair's breadth of a firefight yesterday as a tense stand-off developed over the continued occupation of Gori by the Russian Army. Amid allegations that they were mining the city before a withdrawal, Russian tanks and troops continued to man checkpoints blocking access into the town. They showed no sign of surrendering Gori to the Georgian authorities despite an earlier pledge to do so. Georgian police were admitted briefly to patrol Gori with Russian troops but retreated after relations between the two sides broke down.The dramatic checkpoint confrontation occurred when a convoy of heavily armed Georgians in 20 pickup trucks approached the Russian position, apparently expecting their troops to be withdrawing.

US: Russian Scorched Earth Tactics - Halpin and Baldwin, The Times

The United States accused Russia yesterday of waging a campaign to cripple Georgia’s ability to defend itself in the future. As American military transport aircraft landed in Tbilisi to strong complaints from Moscow, the Russian Army undertook search-and-destroy missions on Georgian soil, defying the ceasefire agreement brokered by President Sarkozy of France. Tanks and soldiers continued to occupy Gori despite promising to leave by yesterday. A Georgian military base in the city was destroyed and the Georgian Ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe accused the Russians of laying mines before a withdrawal.

Signs of Ethnic Attacks in Georgia - Tavernese and Siegel, New York Times

As the conflict between Russia and Georgia enters its second week, there is growing evidence of looting and “ethnic cleansing” in a number of villages throughout the area of conflict. The attacks - some witnessed by reporters or documented by a human rights group - include stealing, the burning of villages and possibly even killings. Some are ethnically motivated, while at least some of the looting appears to be the work of profiteers in areas from which the authorities have fled. The identities of the attackers vary, but a pattern of violence by ethnic Ossetians against ethnic Georgians is emerging and has been confirmed by some Russian authorities.

Moscow Vows to Back Separatists - The Australian

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the separatist leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia yesterday that Moscow would act as their guarantor and support whatever they decided on their status. After a meeting with Mr Medvedev at the Kremlin, Abkhazian leader Sergei Bagapsh and South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity vowed to push ahead with independence from Georgia. "We will achieve independence in accordance with all of the rules of international law," Mr Kokoity said. Mr Bagapsh vowed the two separatist regions would move towards their aim of independence together. Mr Medvedev had earlier told the two separatist leaders Russia would support "any decision taken by the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in accordance with the charter of the United Nations, the 1966 international conventions and the Helsinki act on security and co-operation in Europe".

Chill Falls on US-Moscow Relations - Jon Ward, Washington Times

The widening gap between the United States and Russia expanded further Thursday as formerly communist Poland sought formal US protection and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates threatened the Kremlin with "consequences" for its actions in Georgia. Heightening tensions between the White House and the Kremlin resembled a 21st-century version of the Cold War, with Washington and Moscow trading diplomatic barbs and implied military threats over the Aug. 7-8 invasion of Georgia by Russian troops. Poland, a former Soviet Union satellite, Thursday signed a deal to host 10 American interceptor missiles to shoot down offensive missiles, a deal fiercely opposed by Russia. The pact included what Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called a "mutual agreement" that each country would defend the other in case of attack.

US-Russia Tensions Heighten - Megan Stack, Los Angeles Times

With Russia still defying US demands to pull its troops from Georgia, the short, one-sided fight over two small mountain provinces widened Thursday into the sharpest exchanges yet between Washington and Moscow, threatening to unravel the post-Cold War consensus between them. As Washington dispatched humanitarian relief, but no military aid, to its Georgian allies, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned that unless Russian forces relented from their incursion into Georgia, "the US-Russian relationship could be adversely affected for years to come." But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov bluntly told the Georgians to "forget about" recovering the two secessionist provinces whose unsettled fate triggered this month's fighting. Instead of withdrawing, as demanded a day earlier by President Bush, the Russian military plunged deeper into several towns in Georgia proper, Georgian officials said.

Georgian Invasion Sends Message to World, Gates Says - AFPS

With their invasion of Georgia, the Russians are sending a message not only to neighbors, but also to the world, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today. Georgia, a nation of 5 million in the Caucasus region, has allied itself with the West and is seeking membership in NATO. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are provinces that are seeking to break away from Georgia and ally with Russia. Gates noted that, like clockwork, there have been exchanges of gunfire between Georgian and South Ossetian troops every August. “And this year, it escalated very quickly,” he said. “The Russians were prepared to take advantage of an opportunity.” The Russian air, land and sea attacks against Georgia went far beyond asserting the Russian view of the autonomy of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Russians, Gates said, wanted “to punish Georgia for daring to try to integrate with the West economically and politically and in security arrangements.” The Russian military action was directed against Georgia, but Kremlin leaders wanted nations in all parts of the former Soviet Union to understand the dangers of integrating with the West, Gates said. “I think that they had an opportunity to make some very broad points [to these nations] and, I think, [the Russians] seized that opportunity,” he said. Gates holds a doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University. The message has been received by the nations of the world, Gates said.

Bush Wants Russia to Honor Cease-Fire - Scott Stearns, Voice of America

US President George Bush is again calling on Russia to respect the territorial integrity of Georgia. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, Georgian officials say Russian tanks are moving deeper into the country. President Bush met with intelligence officials at the CIA for an update on fighting in Georgia. Speaking to reporters following that briefing, Mr. Bush again called on Moscow to respect the French-brokered cease-fire. "My call, of course, is for the territorial integrity of Georgia to be respected and for the cease-fire agreement to be honored," said President Bush. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters the world can forget about Georgia's territorial integrity, as President Dmitri Medvedev met with leaders of the Georgian breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abzhazia.

Attacks on Cyberspace Preceded Tanks - Matthew Clayfield, The Australian

At least a week before Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, the country had already come under attack on another front -- in cyberspace. Emphasising the increasing importance of the digital battlefield in modern warfare, Western internet experts said cyber attacks against Georgia's internet infrastructure might have begun as early as July 20, well before Russia began its aggressive campaign against its former satellite. Researchers at the US-based Shadowserver Foundation reported seemingly coordinated attacks against strategic Georgian websites. The site of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was attacked late last month and the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs site became a target late last week. Known as distributed denial of service - or DDOD - attacks, the online assault involved millions of simultaneous hits on the sites, which overloaded Georgian servers, causing them to crash. It remains unclear whether the attacks had been orchestrated by the Russian Government or independent Russian "hacktivists".

Georgian Humanitarian Mission Continues - AFPS

The humanitarian mission under way in Georgia is intended to alleviate suffering for now and will move into longer-range help in the future, officials said at a Pentagon news conference today. The Air Force has sent two supply-filled C-17 Globemaster III transports into Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi. More flights will follow, officials said, but none are scheduled just yet. Russian troops who invaded Georgia last week are beginning to pull back, Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates also spoke at the news conference. “Generally, the [Russian] forces are starting to move out of the city, particularly Gori, starting to consolidate their positions and get themselves into a position where they can start to back away towards... the border,” the general said. “We see that going on particularly in the areas around the seaports and around Tbilisi, and up north of Tbilisi and west towards Gori.” Russian air activities in and around the region have virtually stopped, Cartwright said. “Over the last 24 hours, really, there has been no air activity,” he said. “So we see them generally complying and moving back into a position where they can start to make their exit in an orderly fashion.” Another Air Force plane transported a six-man humanitarian assistance assessment team. “This is a sequenced kind of thing,” Gates said. The team will look at the seaports, airports and roads, assess their condition and report back to US European Command. The team also will work with the US Embassy in Georgia and with Georgian leaders to ascertain what the country needs. US military transport planes or ships will deliver that aid.

Ukraine Ups Ante in Threat to Block Fleet - Tony Halpin, The Australian

Ukraine threatened to blockade the Russian Black Sea Fleet yesterday in an act of solidarity with Georgia that risked escalating the conflict. After flying to Tbilisi to assure Georgians of his country's support, the pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko signed an order imposing restrictions on the Russian fleet, which is based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. His decree instructs Russia to give 72 hours' notice of any movement of ships, aircraft or personnel in Ukraine or its waters. And he gave Ukrainian authorities the power to alter those plans. Ukraine had already warned Russia it would bar ships from returning to Sevastopol if they took part in military action against Georgia.

Russian Warship Notice Sought - Svitlana Korenovska, Washington Times

Ukrainian military officials on Thursday vowed to uphold a decree ordering Russia to seek permission to move its Black Sea warships based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, setting up a conflict between Russia and another pro-Western former Soviet republic. "The president's decrees on the Black Sea fleet will, of course, be implemented on the territory of Ukraine," said Ukrainian Chief of Staff Serhiy Kyrychenko, according to the Unian news agency. "The Defense Ministry and the general staff are among those state bodies responsible for this task." Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday issued the decree, which stated that Russia is required to notify Kiev of its warships' movements within Ukrainian territory at least 72 hours in advance.

US and Poland Set Missile Deal - Shanker and Kulish, New York Times

The United States and Poland reached a long-stalled deal on Thursday to place an American missile defense base on Polish territory, in the strongest reaction so far to Russia’s military operation in Georgia. Russia reacted angrily, saying that the move would worsen relations with the United States that have already been strained severely in the week since Russian troops entered separatist enclaves in Georgia, a close American ally. But the deal reflected growing alarm in countries like Poland, once a conquered Soviet client state, about a newly rich and powerful Russia’s intentions in its former cold war sphere of power. In fact, negotiations dragged on for 18 months - but were completed only as old memories and new fears surfaced in recent days. Those fears were codified to some degree in what Polish and American officials characterized as unusual aspects of the final deal: that at least temporarily American soldiers would staff air defense sites in Poland oriented toward Russia, and that the United States would be obliged to defend Poland in case of an attack with greater speed than required under NATO, of which Poland is a member.

NEWS ANALYSIS / COMMENTARY

Poland Spring - Wall Street Journal editorial

Russia's invasion of Georgia seems to have concentrated the minds of at least some politicians in Europe. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced Thursday that his country had agreed to host 10 American missile-defense interceptors. The agreement comes along with an enhanced promise of mutual defense between the US and Poland. Poland is already a member of NATO, whose linchpin is a promise of mutual aid in case of attack. But Mr. Tusk made it clear that, in light of the West's anemic initial response to the Russian invasion, he wanted more. "It is no good when assistance comes to dead people," Mr. Tusk said, as far too many Georgians have learned. NATO, he feared, would take "days, weeks" to mobilize a response to aggression against Poland.

America's Challenge; Russia's Choice - The Times editorial

On Tuesday it appeared that Russia would withdraw its troops from Georgia just in time to claim victory with honour. Yesterday it became clear that the ceasefire signed by President Medvedev was nothing of the sort. Witnesses reported Russian armour conducting a scorched-earth policy instead of an orderly retreat. Tanks and troops were seen in at least three major towns from which they had been expected to pull back. Not wishing to abandon its Georgian ally - or be seen to - Washington has sent military aid flights to Tbilisi and ordered naval vessels to the Black Sea. The ceasefire brokered by President Sarkozy of France was clear in its broad outlines. It required both sides to desist immediately from using force; to renounce military action in the region in the future; to give free access for humanitarian aid; and to withdraw their troops to pre-conflict positions. These requirements must be enforced at all costs.

Europe's (Dis)unity Over Russia - Christian Science Monitor editorial

This week President Bush promised to "rally the free world in the defense of a free Georgia." But will America's European allies fall in line? Troubling divisions on the continent show just how difficult it may be to present a united front against an overly aggressive Russia. Moscow's invasion of Georgia one week ago, including its bombings, naval presence, and tank incursions in democratic Georgia proper; and its shaky cease-fire and dawdling over a withdrawal - all this presents the greatest test of US-European unity relating to Russia since the cold war. For the sake of democratic and economic freedom in Europe and beyond, and for the integrity of international organizations that support such freedoms, the West must stand together. And yet, European leaders can't agree on how to respond to Russia's calculated crush.

The Kremlin's 'Protection' Racket - Rivkin and Casey, Wall Street Journal

Russia's invasion of Georgia will be a defining moment for America's credibility and global stability. If the Medvedev (or, rather, Putin) regime succeeds in using force to topple a democratic and pro-Western government, based on spurious claims of "protecting" Georgia's population against its own government, the stage will be set for similar aggression against the other states - from the Baltics to Ukraine - that border Russia but look to the free West. The dangers of the post-September 11 World will be combined with the challenge of a new Cold War. Russia is fully aware of these ominous implications. It has accordingly sought to cloak this act of aggression in the raiment of modern international justice. Its officials and surrogates (including Mikhail Gorbachev) have falsely accused Georgian leaders of violating international law in the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, which have "Russian" populations on account of Russia's extralegal issuance of its passports in those areas.

Humanitarian Mission Could Spark Conflict - Richard Beeston, The Australian

Sending US forces into Georgia, even to deliver humanitarian supplies, represents the most serious military escalation between Washington and Moscow since the end of the Cold War. Not since British paratroopers came face to face with Russian soldiers at Pristina airport in 1999 have the old East-West rivalries resurfaced in such explosive form. Back then, the situation was defused by the British commander, General Mike Jackson, who refused to confront the Russians and "start World War III". It is to be hoped the US navy and air force commanders now leading their forces into Georgia will be equipped with the same diplomatic skills. The US warships will be challenging the Russian naval blockade of Georgia's ports, while the giant US military cargo planes will be landing close to areas recently bombed by Russian planes. The Georgians tried to exploit the move yesterday by declaring their ports and airports would be put under US military control, an offer the Pentagon quickly declined. Everyone concerned is fully aware this operation has little to do with humanitarian aid. Georgia is not an African country in the grip of a terrible drought. It is a small pro-Western nation at Europe's fringe that is struggling to recover from a vicious bashing by its giant neighbour.

Conflict Shows EU's Energy Vulnerability - Jeffrey White, CS Monitor

Russia's invasion of Georgian territory last week, in addition to reasserting Moscow's military strength, has complicated Europe's effort to diversify its oil and gas supplies away from the growing dominance of Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom. In the post-Soviet era, and particularly since 9/11, Central Asia has become a central focus for Western countries looking for more secure energy sources. But this week's offensive, during which British Petroleum shut down an oil pipeline and temporarily stopped pumping gas through Georgia, has called into question plans for a Eurasian corridor free from Russian interference. The Russo-Georgian conflict is the latest in a series of setbacks for Europe's planned Nabucco pipeline – its best hope of weaning itself off Gazprom, which set off alarm bells by cutting crucial gas supplies to the continent in the winters of 2006 and 2008.

Global Strategy Harbinger? - Kenneth Timmerman, Washington Times

Russia's new "czar," Vladimir Putin, has much more on his agenda than just invading Georgia. As former Reagan administration diplomat Robert Kagan has argued, Mr. Putin is "making his move" to restore Russia's superpower status. Russia's support for Iran and its nuclear ambitions is a large part of Mr. Putin's global strategy. It's time to face facts about Russia's deep involvement in Iran and recognize that here, too, Russia is no longer an ally, and hardly a friend. Just two days before the invasion of Georgia, Russia again came to the aide of a recalcitrant Iranian regime, even as the United States and its allies were counting on Russia's support to increase pressure on Tehran.

Rainy Nights in Georgia - Cal Thomas, Washington Times

Russia's invasion of Georgia on the pretext of "protecting" Russian peacekeepers stationed in the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and ending the "ethnic cleansing" of native Russians living there is a sobering reminder that the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 was not a sign that old-line communists were ready to walk the sawdust trail of repentance and convert to capitalism, democracy, human rights and religious freedom. Quite the contrary. Vladimir Putin, who continues to effectively run Russia through his hand-picked "successor," President Dmitry Medvedev, still resembles what he once was: the head of the notorious KGB security agency. Mr. Putin never renounced communism, nor has he embraced Western values. Russia was admitted to the G-8 largely because many in the West believed it would soften Mr. Putin and transform the Russian bear into a pussycat. That was a mistake and now we see Mr. Putin for what he is: a man intent on restoring Russia's "greatness" by means that closely resemble those employed by deceased Soviet dictators.

Russia's Ominous New Doctrine? - Strobe Talbott, Washington Post

Russia has been justifying its rampage through Georgia as a "peacekeeping" operation to end the Tbilisi government's "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" of South Ossetia. That terminology deliberately echoes US and NATO language during their 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia, which resulted in the independence of Kosovo. Essentially, it's payback time for a grievance that Russia has borne against the West for nine years. The Russians are relying on the conceit that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is today's equivalent of Slobodan Milosevic, and that the South Ossetians are (or were until their rescue by the latter-day Red Army last week) being victimized by Tbilisi the way the Kosovar Albanians suffered under Belgrade. This analogy turns reality, and history, upside down.

No Options? Nonsense. - Michael Ledeen, National Review

Over and over again, in tones ranging from annoyance to paternalistic, the pundits tell us that “there is no military option” with regard to the Russian invasion of Georgia. And in case you missed the point, they will tell you that we’re not going to war with Russia over this particular crisis. Not for little Georgia, so unimportant, so far away. It’s very hard to find any of the leading commentators who thinks otherwise. It’s an odd way to formulate the issue, since Russia has gone to war with us. Georgia is our ally. As of the time of the invasion, there were more than 150 American military men and women in Georgia, training the locals for self-defense. We are sponsoring Georgian entry into NATO, along with Ukraine. It sure looks like an attack against us. And it’s conjoined to an ultimatum from the Russian foreign minister, who said that the United States would have to choose between good relations with Russia and friendship with our “virtual ally” Georgia.

Dire Aftermath - Austin Bay, Washington Times

As I write this column, Russian troops have halted their main attack just short of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital. That's smart diplomatically and sharp militarily. In late 1994, the Russians attempted to drive Chechen rebels from Grozny, Chechnya's capital, and suffered a terrible defeat. Georgia lacks Russia's vast military arsenal, but Georgian infantrymen are motivated, and the "closed-terrain" of cities gives quality infantry an advantage. The phrase "the situation remains in flux" always applies to initial cease-fires, as forces scramble to secure "just one more" road or ridge. Reports from South Ossetia and Georgia's other separatist region, Abkhazia, are confused. The coming days will provide more reliable details. Nonetheless, a complex and dire diplomatic and political aftermath is upon us.

Georgia's Recklessness - Paul Saunders, Washington Post

The fates of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are chief among the many issues that are still unresolved in the war between Georgia and Russia. What's clear, however, is that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ordered his country's military to assert his authority over South Ossetia by force. American officials should reflect on the implications of Saakashvili's behavior for US policy toward Georgia, Russia and the region. Saakashvili ordered the assault last week knowing that South Ossetia would resist, knowing that his forces would have to take on Russian peacekeepers and knowing that Moscow has been spoiling for a fight. In fact, his own government had claimed for some time that Russia was preparing to attack.

Europe Wins a Gold for Defeatism - Gerard Baker, The Times

To some, China's muscular domination of the Olympic medal table is a powerful allegory of the shifting balance of global power. A far better and more literal testimony to the collapse of the West may be seen in the distinctly weak-kneed response to Russian aggression in Georgia by what is still amusingly called the transatlantic alliance. Once again, the Europeans, and their friends in the pusillanimous wing of the US Left, have demonstrated that, when it come to those postmodern Olympian sports of synchronized self-loathing, team hand-wringing and lightweight posturing, they know how to sweep gold, silver and bronze. There's a routine now whenever some unspeakable act of aggression is visited upon us or our allies by murderous fanatics or authoritarian regimes. While the enemy takes a victory lap, we compete in a shameful medley relay of apologetics, defeatism and surrender.

Russians Confident That Nation Is Back - Anne Barnard, New York Times

While Western commentators are talking of a strategic sea change and a resurgent Russia newly ready to use its military might, many Russians say their country had nothing to prove, at least not to them. The West, they say, may simply have learned what they already knew: Russia is back. And its actions in Georgia are nothing to get excited about, just the ordinary business of a great power in its traditional backyard. Their tone was not so much militant as proud. To describe Russia’s actions, they used words like competent, correct, reasonable. Russia, in their view, is the peacemaker.

High Stakes - Jack David, National Review

As a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction and Negotiations, I’ve sometimes said that the US might consider giving security guarantees to countries worried that not having nuclear-weapon capabilities would put them at risk from neighbors who have them or are seeking them. But my next sentence usually cautioned that US security guarantees will be effective for US intended purposes only if the US has credibility derived both from the ability of its military to provide the guaranteed protection and the perception that the US is politically willing to direct its military to do so. US credibility is very much at stake in the Georgia scenario. President Bush’s announcement Wednesday that humanitarian assistance is on it’s way to Georgia in a C-17 was a good first step; it would have been a better first step for President Bush to add that additional C-17s and other vessels would be following shortly, as it would have shown a measure of US resolve that has to be suspect at this point in time. But subsequent news reports that more C-17s and ships are on the way is promising.

The Great Illusion - Paul Krugman, New York Times

So far, the international economic consequences of the war in the Caucasus have been fairly minor, despite Georgia’s role as a major corridor for oil shipments. But as I was reading the latest bad news, I found myself wondering whether this war is an omen - a sign that the second great age of globalization may share the fate of the first. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, here’s what you need to know: our grandfathers lived in a world of largely self-sufficient, inward-looking national economies - but our great-great grandfathers lived, as we do, in a world of large-scale international trade and investment, a world destroyed by nationalism.

Kremlin Crushes Truce of the Games - Paul Hayes, The Australian

So much for the Olympic truce. Its failure to prevent the conflict between Russia and Georgia shows its idealistic fragility and is yet another realist victory over the neo-liberal view of international order. The Olympic truce, or Ekecheiria, has its origins in the ancient Olympic era (776BC-AD394). According to historian Tony Perrottet, the truce was a sacred ceasefire honoured throughout the Greek world. For one month either side of the games, "wars were stalled, feuds were put aside and highwaymen laid low", primarily to ensure the safe passage of competitors and spectators travelling to and from Olympia. The present Olympic truce has a similar objective. It was initiated by the International Olympic Committee in 1992 as part of its ambitious charter to promote a more peaceful world through sport, or more particularly Olympism, and was adopted by the member states of the UN General Assembly in 1993. It has been continuously affirmed and observed by the international community at each Olympiad since.

Russia's Payback - Andrew Bacevich, Christian Science Monitor

Poke a bear often enough and you're likely to get bitten. As the crisis over Georgia continues, this describes where the West finds itself today in its relations with Russia. Amid conflicting reports of Russia's commitment to a cease-fire, one thing is clear: Moscow scored a crushing geopolitical victory this week. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that the US must choose between a "virtual project" with Georgia, or a real partnership with Russia. After days of evident disarray, only now is the West cobbling together a response: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Georgia in a symbolic show of support, US Air Force cargo jets are delivering small amounts of humanitarian aid, and NATO ministers will meet Tuesday to consider the crisis. When they do, they should remember how we got to this point. The cold war's end nearly two decades ago left Russia badly weakened. Adhering to the iron laws of politics, the West immediately set out to exploit its advantage.

A Free Press? Not This Time. - Olga Ivanova, Washington Post

I wish I could fly back to Russia. I have been in the United States for a year, and I am studying and working here to get experience in American journalism, known worldwide for its independence and professionalism. But in recent days it has felt as though I am too late, that the journalism of Watergate is well behind us and that reporting is no longer fair and balanced. For years I have respected American newspapers for being independent. But no longer. Coverage of the conflict between Russia and Georgia has been unprofessional, to say the least. I was surprised and disappointed that the world's media immediately took the side of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili last week. American newspapers have run story after story about how "evil" Russia invaded a sovereign neighboring state. Many accounts made it seem as though the conflict was started by an aggressive Russia invading the Georgian territory of South Ossetia. Some said that South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali, was destroyed by the Russian army. Little attention was paid to the chronology of events, the facts underlying the conflict.

South Ossetia: The perfect wrong war

By Walid Phares


I am posting an article I titled "South Ossetia, the Perfect Wrong War." In the current hot debate about the South Ossetia-Georgia conflict there are two main trends in the West:

1. Western frustration: To consider Russia's aggressive response as part of a renewed Cold war and thus a signal for the West to mobilize against the Russians, again.

2. Anti-American Critics: To consider US policy as responsible for this and other crises and thus the need to change this policy.

3. Strategic Wisdom: I am suggesting a third way to look at it through the big picture of our War on Terror and how to deal with such conflicts. This thesis may not attractive to the previous main trends, but it would be wise to consider in a post 9/11 era.

The ongoing debate in the West and particularly in the US is showing revealing trends. The critics of the War on terror blame the US. The supporters of the War on Terror split in two camps. One platform recommending an all out mobilization against Moscow, while the Coalition is battling the Jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan and dealing with Iran. And another platform advising to smartly contain the current crisis with Russia and focus on the confrontation with the Jihadi forces. The latter forces of course would be delighted to see the US engaging in two global conflicts instead of one. They will be delighted even more, if the US (and the West) would suspend the War on Terror and re-engage in a new Cold war. Here is the essay.

Read More »


South Ossetia: The perfect wrong war

By now, days after Georgian forces stormed the capital of south Ossetia and Russian units counter attacked across the breaking away province and beyond; a devastating war has spread across the Caucasus causing death, destruction and displacement of populations. All wars are terrible -- even the legitimate ones where country, freedom and survival at are at stake. But this war is particularly unnecessary, could have been avoided and above all is wrong; in fact I call it the perfect wrong war.

Unfortunately, when battles are raging with tanks, artillery, bombs and all sort of firepower, it becomes more difficult to see the substantive issues clearly than before the confrontation began. For example, it becomes more pressing to reach a cease fire, provide medical attention, create Red Cross corridors, stop ethnic cleansing, human rights breaches and take care of refugees, than to investigate who began the hostilities, what provoked it, what are the local claims and what international equation has permitted such an onslaught. And to make it more complicated, rushed journalistic reporting -- often biased -- confuses public opinion endlessly. In short, once the bullets fly, media sensationalism explodes and political agendas creep in.

Let's review the battle of arguments in the South Ossetia conflict and try to analyze the essence while keeping an eye on the bigger picture, the one that affects democracies' national security and international efforts against terror forces.

The classical slogans

When you observe the media analysis worldwide, you can spot the mutual classical slogans and easy assessments, not always accurate. As soon as the clashes began in Tskhinvali (the South Ossetian capital), anti-American propagandists rushed to accuse the Bush Administration of "pushing President Mikheil Saakshvili to perform an attack destined to weaken the Kremlin." Other more sinister charges linked the Georgian move to a US "interest in Oil pipelines." Similar to the 9/11 conspiracy theories these allegations were also found in some Russian unofficial commentaries. But opposing narratives spoke of a "Putin offensive to expand Russian power southbound after years of weakness." Many stories accused the Kremlin of simply trying to "re-occupy" former Soviet Republics.

Obviously these slogans from this and other sides are frivolous. Neither Moscow nor Washington are in a state allowing them to wage wars at will 18 years after the end of the Cold War. The United States, involved in two battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq and closely monitoring developments in precarious Pakistan and in aggressive Iran, is certainly not planning another conflict in the Caucasus where it would have to commit a ground support. With a US Presidential election in weeks and a major debate about US involvement anywhere, forget about these hallucinations. Moscow too, despite the sour post-Soviet feelings in Red Square, is not in the business of re-invading any Republic to bring it back to the "empire:" In Hollywoodian imagination, maybe; but in real politics not so likely. So what are the actual reasons behind these tragic events and escalating military clashes?

The roots of the local conflict

South Ossetia and Abkhazia are provinces (self declared Republics) within a sovereign country, Georgia. The populations of these two entities, non ethnic Georgians, rose to obtain separation based on their own perception of cultural identity. In comparative analysis they would be the equivalent of Kosovo's ethnic-Albanians. As in other ethnic conflicts, each side claim superseding ownership; but in the eyes of modern international law that is irrelevant after hundreds of years of settlement. An initial confrontation in the early 1990s (1992-1994) between Georgia’s post Soviet Government and the separatist movements led to agreements allowing for local autonomy for these two areas and for the deployment of Russian (CIS) Peacekeepers.

For almost 16 years this status quo survived while awaiting a final resolution of the conflict. As in many spots in the Caucasus and the Balkans, borders do not always correspond with nationalities and ethnicities. The agreement between South Ossetia and Georgia, blessed by Moscow, was the guarantee of stability, until times changed.

Five reasons led to transformations: One was the shift of Georgia to NATO and friendship to Washington; two was a shift in Moscow from good relations with the US under Yeltsin and the first years of Putin to more tense relations in the last Putin years; three was the active participation of Georgia in US-led activities in Iraq; four were the Ossetians' continuous aspirations towards self determination; and last but not least, the breakdown of friendship between the West and Russia since the Kosovo resolution few months ago, the real last straw.

The Kosovo factor

Since 1999, the outcome of the Western campaign in Kosovo brought about a parallel status quo to the one established in South Ossetia and in Abkhasia. In short, NATO had created an autonomous area for the ethnic Albanians inside a sovereign country, Serbia; while Russia and the CIS have insured autonomous status for South Ossetians and Abkhasians inside another sovereign state, Georgia.

From a Russian perspective the two cases were linked and would eventually be resolved via negotiations. From a Western perspective Kosovo was "unique" and was to be resolved differently, that is granted independence unilaterally. But as long as Russian-American relations especially under Presidents Bush and Putin were warm, the de facto enclaves in Kosovo and Ossetia lived in stability.

The challenge began when during winter 2008, the US and the European Union decided to unleash Kosovo's separation despite Serbia's opposition. In international jurisprudence, breaking away entities need validation by the country the partition is going to affect. In Canada for example, Quebec would always need the other provinces to agree on separation. Agreement of "both sides" is usually sought.

But in the case of Kosovo, for international political motivations, including a gesture to please the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in the midst of a campaign to win hearts and minds, Washington and Brussels went ahead swiftly and endorsed Pristina's declaration of separation from Belgrade. The Western powers argued that going back to Serbia was out of question for the Kosovars; therefore going forward was the only option, despite Serbian claims inside the province.

The underlying geopolitical reasoning was that no force including the Russians would be able to oppose the move. "They are too far" to intervene, assumed the diplomats. But Moscow made its intentions known the day of Kosovo's declaration of independence.

The Russian statement was poorly covered in the international media. The release said the Russian Federation will recognize the efforts by South Ossetia and Abkhazia to secede from Georgia. It was a clear eye for an eye declaration, but it went unnoticed in the West. In an article titled "Be Wise on Kosovo," published on December 13, 2007 in the American Thinker, I warned that a chain reaction may begin elsewhere. The confrontations taking place today in the Caucasus were triggered strategically in the Balkans few months before. Russia was ignored on the shores of the Mediterranean, it responded on the shores of the Black sea. To Moscow, Georgia's allies are also "too far" when the enclaves would move to separation.

Direct causes

But Georgia's Government realized the sense of Russia's statements and still decided to act preemptively. President Mikheil Saakashvili must have calculated that by moving fast on the ground he would avoid the repetition of a Kosovo-like declaration in South Ossetia. His strategic algebra is still unclear to me. Was he hoping for a blitz seizure of Tskhinvali and the formation of a pro-Georgian local government? Was he predicting a slow Russian reaction? Historians will tell. But the chain reaction is clear. Moscow gave the green light to South Ossetia and Abkhazia to follow the Kosovo model, and Tbilisi rushed to abort these moves. Hence Georgian forces were ordered by Saakashvili to "bring back constitutional order" to the breakaway republics -- 16 years after a status quo -- and Medvedev and Putin responded by sending Russian forces to drive the Georgians out of the two provinces. In its own response Russia was telling the West: South Ossetia is Kosovo and Georgia is Serbia; I am applying your doctrine in the Caucasus.

From August 6 on, the Georgian offensive attempted to seize the capital of the enclave and the Russian counter offensive pushed the Georgians out. Moscow accused Tbilisi's units of ethnic cleansing and Georgia's leaders counter-accused the Russians of invading all of their country. The fog of war is still too thick at this point.

International reactions

The US blasted the Russian Federation for the attack while the European Union called for a return to the status quo ante, technically cancelling the effects of the Georgian attack but hoping for a Russian stop of operations. In the Security Council a battle of words has been raging for days without real results, other than wishes for a cease fire. Naturally Britain stood by America and China discreetly backed Russia.

In Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in the Baltic sub-region politicians are very concerned. From Prague to Tallinn politicians remember the Soviet occupation and fear a repeat of Ossetian scenarios on their land. In the Baltic States many are concerned that local Russian populations may call for similar interventions. Perhaps these fears are unwarranted as the Caucasus enclaves have historical roots, unlike the north.

But on both sides of the Atlantic unease is spreading. Hard core critics of Russia, vestiges of the Cold war, still believe that the Soviet Union changed clothes but is still around. Others boil down the crisis to standing by Georgia as an ally, period. On the left, any alibi is good to demean American policy. In a sum, confusion reigns: how did the West get itself to face off with post Soviet Russia in an ethnic standoff in the Caucasus? Was the Kosovo episode too rushed? Did Washington and Brussels' East Policies fail in the middle of a war on terror? Or was the Atlantic West dragged by other world powers to re-clash with the East? Again, historians will have to investigate.

But meanwhile, a growing number of observers in the West are connecting the dots from the South Ossetia drama to much wider and strategic horizons. How to look at the Caucasus crisis is the question. Do we want to bring back the Cold war and the Russo-Western struggle? Do we want to drop the War on Terror and swim back to the pre 1990s years? Or do we want to win the global confrontation with the forthcoming Jihadi Caliphate?

At the end of the day, it is a question of choices, and mostly the democracies' choice.

Hard strategic questions

Is the Russian current leadership displaying features of superpower-return, of zones of influence and of so-called strategic belts? Yes it does. Prime Minister Putin and his Government showed many signs of opposition to the advancing NATO influence in what he perceives as Russia's neighborhood: the crisis with Ukraine, opposition to missiles defense shield in Eastern Europe and nervousness about US military influence developing at the edges of the former USSR, including in Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia and Georgia.

But beyond these geopolitical considerations the Kremlin also rejected the US-led Iraq campaign, the isolation of the Syrian regime and the containment of the Iran Khomeinist power. And here lies the distinction. If Moscow's politico-military establishment feels uncomfortable with NATO coming closer to Russia's borders, it can express that discontent and address it in bilateral relationships with Washington. The United States, for example, wouldn't be very comfortable seeing Russian missiles systems installed in Mexico or a strategic defense treaty signed between Haiti and China. These are classical moves in international relations, drawing tensions and counter moves.

But for Russia to actively arm Iran and Syria, this is a feature of cold war, inconsistent with present the international consensus against Terrorism. The Tehran-Damascus "axis" is in an active campaign to support Jihadi terror forces in the region and armed groups involved in the killing of US and Coalition personnel. It would be the equivalent of having the US arming and providing technology to Wahabi Chechen Terrorists operating against Russian cities and military. Hence, while Americans are as anti-terrorist as Russia is when it comes to the al-Qaeda Salafi threat, Russians are still feeding anti-Western forces in the Middle East. Hence there is a difference between Russian discomfort with NATO growth around the CIS and US concerns about Russia's protection of Iranian-Syrian efforts in the region. Moscow is backing a party at war with the US Coalition while Americans aren't assisting parties at War with Russia.

So, if that is the case, what is the best strategic course of action that the US and NATO must follow to address this problem? Some advise Washington to press the encirclement of the Russian Federation and put pressure on its few allies in the Balkans, thinking that this would weaken the Kremlin resolve to fight back. I disagree. If Russia's leadership has moved to counter US efforts in the Middle East the right response is not to escalate against the Russians in Kosovo and along their borders, including in Ossetia. For by pursuing such policy -- while the US and its allies are engaged in massive confrontations against the Salafist movements and the Khomeinist power -- the West will find itself over stretched on two world fronts, one of them at least is unnecessary: Russia.

To be crude: Liberal democracies have no interest in over-pressuring Russia in the course of strategic gaming while they are at full war with the Global Jihadists. Such a move will push the Russians away from converging with the West against the "common enemy." Instead of consolidating a Western-Russian entente against both Salafists and Khomeinists, Russia and the US are confronting the Wahabis separately and in most cases unsuccessfully while the Russians have befriended the Khomeinists who are harassing the Americans. The Russo-American competition is not helping either side, but one other side does win: the Global Jihadists.

Jihadi Dual agenda

The world Salafists' ultimate wish is to see the two infidel superpowers at odds with each other again; and that is happening. The combat-Jihadists want bloodshed both in Moscow and in Washington now and in the future. The long-term Wahabis likes the idea of an American demobilization against Jihadism and a re-mobilization against Russia. Ending the War on Terror and reigniting the Cold war is the ultimate fantasy of the oil producing fundamentalist powers.

On the other hand, the Iranian regime and its allies in Syria and Lebanon have clearly opted for privileged strategic relations with Russia as a way to counterbalance the US and its allies in the region. The flow of petro cash from Iranian oil revenues can ensure a good business and military relationship with Moscow. Some in the latter city -- still recalling Cold War feelings -- like the idea of client states (or so they think) counterbalancing American presence in the Middle East.

In the final analysis, the two main trees of Jihadism are playing West against East to ensure the weakening and ultimately the collapse of their grand foes. The Wahabis wants to bring Russia down via the establishment of several Wahabi emirates in its midst --from Chechnya to Central Asia. And the Khomeinists want the US out of the region so that they can establish their own dominance instead.

Moscow and Washington (and Brussels as well) should not be manipulated by oil fundamentalist powers against each other. The Cold War should not be brought back at the expense of winning the conflict against Jihadi Terrorism. In clear terms: no wars should be waged outside the international campaign against the terrorists, should it be an ethnic or economic one. These, including the current Caucasus conflict, are wrong wars as they would profit the global Jihadi forces, both political and military.

The road from here

With this outlook in mind Western and Russian actions must climb back the walls and get off the pit they got themselves in.


1) First a swift conclusion of the Georgia-South Ossetia-Abkhazia conflict.

It is important to help the parties to the conflict end the military confrontation as fast as possible. Open wounds should not be allowed to fester. Lines of direct clashes must be frozen. After the consolidation of an internationally endorsed cease fire, security measures on the ground have to take place in a way to ensure a non repeat of the drama. Georgian forces should return to their initial positions of pre August 6, 2008 -- that is on their national soil but outside the two "ethnic republics." To separate them from the South Ossetians and Abkhasians until the political conflict is resolved, CIS Peace keepers should remain in their initial positions but it is highly recommended that other forces --not engaged in the latest clashes -- deploy between the two contending armed forces. A United Nations mandate (not regular UN units at this stage) for specially selected troops trusted from both sides such as French, Spanish, Greek, Mongolian, Japanese, Argentines, etc. would be best to separate the militaries on the ground. Once that stage is completed, the political process must begin.

2) International resolution process

A UN-led commission of inquiry (with and all members of the UN Security Council) must meet with representatives of the South Ossetians and Abkhazians to determine their suggested claims and meet with the Government of Georgia to note their demands as well. Unlike in the Kosovo case, all sides should be listened to and all concerns should be catered to as well. The interim stage can take different shapes but the ultimate process ironically must follow the Kosovo precedent -- that is to grant the South Ossetians and Abkhazians their right for self-determination while Georgians concerns must be addressed. The final security arrangements are best to be made under international auspices so that responsibility for breaches can be determined by universal measurements.

3) Russo-Western guarantees

To guarantee the two processes, security and political, a Russo-Western summit (in different shape) must take place including Russia, the United States and the European Union. Such a summit should work on ending the tensions between the two sides worldwide and in the Caucasus. A thinking process about a NATO-Russian dialogue must begin based on two principles: stabilization of ethnic conflicts internationally and focus on a new stage in the confrontation with international Terror forces. This process may take a long time, but as it begins, crises such as the South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia must be addressed immediately and military clashes avoided.

Conclusion

In the end, even if the above comments and opinion seem to be too utopian, a simple review of the alternatives is a road to nowhere except a defeat of the international community in its quest for a win against Terror. This Caucasus conflict should create enough consciousness among Western and other democracies, including Russia, that any global confrontation between these large blocs -- regardless of their pending issues -- is a loss to the overarching world efforts against the danger that menaces all democracies, including India, other world powers such as China, and Muslim moderate countries as well. Obviously to those many among us in the West who are still swimming in Cold War culture, and to those in Russia who perceive the post-Soviet era with pre-1990 lenses, these crises are opportunities to sharpen the old rusty swords of the East-West conflict. I am making the case strongly in this article against such a return to a past we all lived through and hoped would end. After the terror attacks of 9/11, Madrid, London, Mumbai, Moscow and Beslan we have all moved to a new era: a relentless Jihadi war War waged against all Kuffars (infidels) worldwide.

The Kosovo affair was concluded with sourness that came back to haunt the international community in South Ossetia. That is the first lesson to learn from it. The military clashes between Russia and Georgia told us that new conflicts would collapse all that the international community has tried to achieve for the last seven years. That is the second lesson. Third and last, without going back to the blame game, the South Ossetia war was a wrong war that should have been avoided: It was a perfect wrong War.

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Dr. Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a visiting scholar with the European Foundation for Democracy, the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad,

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August 14, 2008 11:25 PM Link

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  Leader: How the West should respond
  The war in Georgia was a victory for Russia. The West's options are limited, but it needs to pursue them firmly

Friday, August 15, 2008

Interventionist Hypocrisy
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Referring to Russia’s incursion into Georgia, President Bush says that invading a sovereign country that poses no threat is “unacceptable in the 21st century.” John McCain echoes that sentiment with, “In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

What planet do Bush and McCain live on? Have they never heard of Iraq? That’s a sovereign and independent country that never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Nonetheless, under Bush’s command and with McCain’s support, the U.S. government invaded Iraq, effected regime change, and is still occupying the country.

Perhaps Bush and McCain are upset that Russia did not ask for UN approval before invading Georgia. But Bush himself did not secure UN approval before invading Iraq. In fact, once it became clear that the UN was going to deny Bush’s request, he ordered the invasion anyway.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq have been so brutal that more than a million people have been killed, countless maimed, tortured, and sexually abused, and millions exiled. The entire country has been destroyed. That’s on top of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children killed as a result of the cruel and brutal pre-invasion sanctions that had been enforced against the Iraqi people for more than a decade.

Let’s also not forget about Afghanistan. In 2001, Bush’s military forces, fully supported by McCain, invaded that sovereign and independent country, effected regime change, and are still occupying the country. Although Bush promised to provide evidence of complicity in the 9/11 attacks on the part of the Afghan government, he never did so.

We also should bear in mind that Bush, supported by McCain, never sought or acquired the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war against Iraq or Afghanistan, thereby making the invasions illegal under our form of government.

All this occurred well into the 21st century.

And while we’re on the issue of powerful governments that exercise coercive influence on nearby countries, let’s not forget the following here in the Western hemisphere:

1. The U.S. government effected regime change in Guatemala.
2. The U.S. government supported the regime change operation in Chile and even played an “unfortunate role” in the killing of an American citizen during the operation.
3. The U.S. government has long attempted to effect regime change in Cuba, especially with its cruel and brutal embargo against the Cuban people.
4. The U.S. government intervened in Nicaragua by arming and supplying the Contras and illegally mining Nicaraguan waters.
5. The U.S. government effected regime change in Haiti.
6. The U.S. government invaded Grenada and effected regime change there.
7. The U.S. government, under the guise of the drug war, invaded Panama and effected regime change there.
8. The U.S. government invaded the Dominican Republic and effected regime change there.

That’s just a sampling of U.S. interventions in Latin America. Here is a more complete list.

While it’s true that those interventions took place in the 20th century rather than the 21st century, do you see Bush, McCain, or for that matter Obama, condemning any of them? I wonder what they would have said if Russia, China, or some other country had declared that any of these interventions were “unacceptable.”

U.S. interventionists need to keep in mind that when they point their finger at their interventionist counterparts in other countries and declare that their invasions are unacceptable, there are 3 fingers pointing back at themselves. As the old saying goes, “Physician, heal thyself.” What better way to lead the world?

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Rice: Draft Truce Protects Georgia - Bahrampour and Schneider, Washington Post

With Russian troops still holding key positions in the country, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived here on Friday hoping to help resolve a week-long military conflict that has undermined relations between Washington and Moscow and left the two superpowers tossing threats at each other. In a show of support for the Georgian government, Rice will meet with President Mikheil Saakashvili to get his formal approval of a French-brokered ceasefire agreement - a step towards an expected Russian withdrawal. The US also has begun humanitarian aid deliveries to the country, and will be involved in future discussions about the fate of two Russian-allied separatist provinces which sparked the current conflict. Top Russian officials say that the two provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, should not return to Georgian control, while the US and Europe say they expect Georgia's borders to be respected.

Russian Blockade Continues in Gori - Associated Press

Russian troops on Friday allowed some humanitarian supplies into the city of Gori but continued their blockade of the strategically located city, raising doubts about Russia's intentions in the war-battered country. A flurry of international diplomacy, meanwhile, was set in motion Friday to clear the way for a Russian withdrawal. Gori is on the country's main east-west highway about 45 miles west of the capital, Tbilisi. By holding it, Russian forces effectively cut Georgia in half.

Russian Relations In Doubt, Gates Says - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

Russian behavior in Georgia has "called into question the entire premise" of relations between Washington and Moscow, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday, even as the Bush administration appeared willing to let Russia take its time removing its forces from disputed areas inside the former Soviet republic. Gates reported a sharp drop in Russian military activities and said troops seemed to be positioning themselves to depart Georgia proper, toward the separatist, pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He said a US military humanitarian-assessment team that arrived Wednesday will take 48 hours to determine how best to distribute aid. But US officials acknowledged late in the day that they were uncertain whether any significant Russian movement was underway.

Russia Actions Jeopardize Ties - Myers and Shanker, New York Times

Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has jolted the Bush administration’s relationship with Moscow, senior officials said Thursday, forcing a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia and jeopardizing talks on everything from halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals to cooperation on missiles defenses. The conflict punctuated a stark turnabout in the administration’s view of Vladimir V. Putin, the president turned prime minister whom President Bush has repeatedly described as a trustworthy friend. Now Mr. Bush’s aides complain that Russian officials have been misleading or at least evasive about Russia’s intentions in Georgia. Even as the conflict between Russia and Georgia appeared to ease on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said the Russian attack had forced a fundamental rethinking of the administration’s effort to forge “an ongoing and long-term strategic dialogue with Russia.”

Russians Leave, Then Return to Gori - Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post

Georgia remained in a state of uncertainty Thursday as Russian troops retreated from and then returned to the city of Gori and spent much of the day destroying or carrying away captured Georgian military equipment. Elsewhere in the country, Russian tanks and trucks rolled along country roads toward unknown destinations, watched by local people. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that Georgia could "forget about" ever regaining the two secessionist regions that are at the heart of the conflict. At the Kremlin, President Dmitry Medvedev warmly received the political leaders of the zones, which Georgia and the United States insist remain part of Georgia. Two days ago, Medvedev said Russian troops had ceased hostilities and would withdraw. Since then, his troops have moved erratically, heading in one direction and then veering off or reversing course.

Russia Vows to Support Two Enclaves - Clifford Levy, New York Times

Russia issued a rebuke to President Bush on Thursday over the conflict in neighboring Georgia, refusing an immediate withdrawal of its troops there, affirming its support for two separatist enclaves and warning the United States to avoid doing anything that would encourage its Georgian ally to reignite hostilities. In response, in the most pointed language yet from a Bush administration official, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates declared that Russia’s actions now required a full reassessment of administration efforts to create “an ongoing and long-term strategic dialogue with Russia.”

Russia Preparing for Georgia Withdrawal - Al Pessin, Voice of America

A top US military officer says Russian forces appear to be preparing to withdraw from Georgia, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the moves must continue or Russia will face serious long-term consequences in its relations with the United States and the West. The secretary says some consequences are already in order. The number two US military officer, General James Cartwright, says Russia has virtually stopped air activities over Georgia and is generally complying with promises to end hostilities. "It's difficult at the tactical level to know each and every engagement in each town," he said. "But, generally the forces are starting to move out of the city, particularly Gori, starting to consolidate their positions and get themselves into a position where they can start to back away toward the border." General Cartwright says a 12-member US military assessment team is working to determine whether roads, airports and seaports are clear to enable the delivery of relief supplies, with two planeloads already on the ground in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. But Secretary Gates said he sees "no prospect" of US forces getting involved in the conflict, saying the United States worked hard for 45 years to avoid war with the Soviet Union and Russia, and he sees no reason to change that policy now.

Saakashvili: Russia Occupies One-Third of Georgia - Voice of America

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says a convoy of Russian tanks pushing deeper into Georgia towards the second largest city, Kutaisi, has stopped. Mr. Saakashvili gave no details on the Russian tank movement. But he told CNN television Thursday that Russia currently occupies one-third of his country. He said the presence of Russian irregulars, armed men who are not full-time soldiers, is extremely worrying. He accuses them of looting and killing in ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia. Earlier, Russian tanks took up positions outside the strategic city of Gori after a stand-off with Georgian authorities who were trying to re-enter the abandoned town. The Georgians had refused to endorse a proposal for South Ossetian police to patrol Gori. It was not immediately clear if the stand-off has ended, but no shooting has been reported. Elsewhere, witnesses say Russian troops entered the undefended Black Sea port of Poti and took computers and other equipment from port facilities. US officials have accused Russia of disabling Georgian military installations.

Russians Refuse to Withdraw from Gori - Tony Halpin, The Times

It was a moment when the ceasefire between Russia and Georgia could have collapsed in a single nervous twitch of a soldier's trigger finger. Opposing troops came within a hair's breadth of a firefight yesterday as a tense stand-off developed over the continued occupation of Gori by the Russian Army. Amid allegations that they were mining the city before a withdrawal, Russian tanks and troops continued to man checkpoints blocking access into the town. They showed no sign of surrendering Gori to the Georgian authorities despite an earlier pledge to do so. Georgian police were admitted briefly to patrol Gori with Russian troops but retreated after relations between the two sides broke down.The dramatic checkpoint confrontation occurred when a convoy of heavily armed Georgians in 20 pickup trucks approached the Russian position, apparently expecting their troops to be withdrawing.

US: Russian Scorched Earth Tactics - Halpin and Baldwin, The Times

The United States accused Russia yesterday of waging a campaign to cripple Georgia’s ability to defend itself in the future. As American military transport aircraft landed in Tbilisi to strong complaints from Moscow, the Russian Army undertook search-and-destroy missions on Georgian soil, defying the ceasefire agreement brokered by President Sarkozy of France. Tanks and soldiers continued to occupy Gori despite promising to leave by yesterday. A Georgian military base in the city was destroyed and the Georgian Ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe accused the Russians of laying mines before a withdrawal.

Signs of Ethnic Attacks in Georgia - Tavernese and Siegel, New York Times

As the conflict between Russia and Georgia enters its second week, there is growing evidence of looting and “ethnic cleansing” in a number of villages throughout the area of conflict. The attacks - some witnessed by reporters or documented by a human rights group - include stealing, the burning of villages and possibly even killings. Some are ethnically motivated, while at least some of the looting appears to be the work of profiteers in areas from which the authorities have fled. The identities of the attackers vary, but a pattern of violence by ethnic Ossetians against ethnic Georgians is emerging and has been confirmed by some Russian authorities.

Moscow Vows to Back Separatists - The Australian

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the separatist leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia yesterday that Moscow would act as their guarantor and support whatever they decided on their status. After a meeting with Mr Medvedev at the Kremlin, Abkhazian leader Sergei Bagapsh and South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity vowed to push ahead with independence from Georgia. "We will achieve independence in accordance with all of the rules of international law," Mr Kokoity said. Mr Bagapsh vowed the two separatist regions would move towards their aim of independence together. Mr Medvedev had earlier told the two separatist leaders Russia would support "any decision taken by the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in accordance with the charter of the United Nations, the 1966 international conventions and the Helsinki act on security and co-operation in Europe".

Chill Falls on US-Moscow Relations - Jon Ward, Washington Times

The widening gap between the United States and Russia expanded further Thursday as formerly communist Poland sought formal US protection and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates threatened the Kremlin with "consequences" for its actions in Georgia. Heightening tensions between the White House and the Kremlin resembled a 21st-century version of the Cold War, with Washington and Moscow trading diplomatic barbs and implied military threats over the Aug. 7-8 invasion of Georgia by Russian troops. Poland, a former Soviet Union satellite, Thursday signed a deal to host 10 American interceptor missiles to shoot down offensive missiles, a deal fiercely opposed by Russia. The pact included what Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called a "mutual agreement" that each country would defend the other in case of attack.

US-Russia Tensions Heighten - Megan Stack, Los Angeles Times

With Russia still defying US demands to pull its troops from Georgia, the short, one-sided fight over two small mountain provinces widened Thursday into the sharpest exchanges yet between Washington and Moscow, threatening to unravel the post-Cold War consensus between them. As Washington dispatched humanitarian relief, but no military aid, to its Georgian allies, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned that unless Russian forces relented from their incursion into Georgia, "the US-Russian relationship could be adversely affected for years to come." But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov bluntly told the Georgians to "forget about" recovering the two secessionist provinces whose unsettled fate triggered this month's fighting. Instead of withdrawing, as demanded a day earlier by President Bush, the Russian military plunged deeper into several towns in Georgia proper, Georgian officials said.

Georgian Invasion Sends Message to World, Gates Says - AFPS

With their invasion of Georgia, the Russians are sending a message not only to neighbors, but also to the world, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today. Georgia, a nation of 5 million in the Caucasus region, has allied itself with the West and is seeking membership in NATO. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are provinces that are seeking to break away from Georgia and ally with Russia. Gates noted that, like clockwork, there have been exchanges of gunfire between Georgian and South Ossetian troops every August. “And this year, it escalated very quickly,” he said. “The Russians were prepared to take advantage of an opportunity.” The Russian air, land and sea attacks against Georgia went far beyond asserting the Russian view of the autonomy of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Russians, Gates said, wanted “to punish Georgia for daring to try to integrate with the West economically and politically and in security arrangements.” The Russian military action was directed against Georgia, but Kremlin leaders wanted nations in all parts of the former Soviet Union to understand the dangers of integrating with the West, Gates said. “I think that they had an opportunity to make some very broad points [to these nations] and, I think, [the Russians] seized that opportunity,” he said. Gates holds a doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University. The message has been received by the nations of the world, Gates said.

Bush Wants Russia to Honor Cease-Fire - Scott Stearns, Voice of America

US President George Bush is again calling on Russia to respect the territorial integrity of Georgia. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, Georgian officials say Russian tanks are moving deeper into the country. President Bush met with intelligence officials at the CIA for an update on fighting in Georgia. Speaking to reporters following that briefing, Mr. Bush again called on Moscow to respect the French-brokered cease-fire. "My call, of course, is for the territorial integrity of Georgia to be respected and for the cease-fire agreement to be honored," said President Bush. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters the world can forget about Georgia's territorial integrity, as President Dmitri Medvedev met with leaders of the Georgian breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abzhazia.

Attacks on Cyberspace Preceded Tanks - Matthew Clayfield, The Australian

At least a week before Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, the country had already come under attack on another front -- in cyberspace. Emphasising the increasing importance of the digital battlefield in modern warfare, Western internet experts said cyber attacks against Georgia's internet infrastructure might have begun as early as July 20, well before Russia began its aggressive campaign against its former satellite. Researchers at the US-based Shadowserver Foundation reported seemingly coordinated attacks against strategic Georgian websites. The site of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was attacked late last month and the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs site became a target late last week. Known as distributed denial of service - or DDOD - attacks, the online assault involved millions of simultaneous hits on the sites, which overloaded Georgian servers, causing them to crash. It remains unclear whether the attacks had been orchestrated by the Russian Government or independent Russian "hacktivists".

Georgian Humanitarian Mission Continues - AFPS

The humanitarian mission under way in Georgia is intended to alleviate suffering for now and will move into longer-range help in the future, officials said at a Pentagon news conference today. The Air Force has sent two supply-filled C-17 Globemaster III transports into Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi. More flights will follow, officials said, but none are scheduled just yet. Russian troops who invaded Georgia last week are beginning to pull back, Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates also spoke at the news conference. “Generally, the [Russian] forces are starting to move out of the city, particularly Gori, starting to consolidate their positions and get themselves into a position where they can start to back away towards... the border,” the general said. “We see that going on particularly in the areas around the seaports and around Tbilisi, and up north of Tbilisi and west towards Gori.” Russian air activities in and around the region have virtually stopped, Cartwright said. “Over the last 24 hours, really, there has been no air activity,” he said. “So we see them generally complying and moving back into a position where they can start to make their exit in an orderly fashion.” Another Air Force plane transported a six-man humanitarian assistance assessment team. “This is a sequenced kind of thing,” Gates said. The team will look at the seaports, airports and roads, assess their condition and report back to US European Command. The team also will work with the US Embassy in Georgia and with Georgian leaders to ascertain what the country needs. US military transport planes or ships will deliver that aid.

Ukraine Ups Ante in Threat to Block Fleet - Tony Halpin, The Australian

Ukraine threatened to blockade the Russian Black Sea Fleet yesterday in an act of solidarity with Georgia that risked escalating the conflict. After flying to Tbilisi to assure Georgians of his country's support, the pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko signed an order imposing restrictions on the Russian fleet, which is based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. His decree instructs Russia to give 72 hours' notice of any movement of ships, aircraft or personnel in Ukraine or its waters. And he gave Ukrainian authorities the power to alter those plans. Ukraine had already warned Russia it would bar ships from returning to Sevastopol if they took part in military action against Georgia.

Russian Warship Notice Sought - Svitlana Korenovska, Washington Times

Ukrainian military officials on Thursday vowed to uphold a decree ordering Russia to seek permission to move its Black Sea warships based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, setting up a conflict between Russia and another pro-Western former Soviet republic. "The president's decrees on the Black Sea fleet will, of course, be implemented on the territory of Ukraine," said Ukrainian Chief of Staff Serhiy Kyrychenko, according to the Unian news agency. "The Defense Ministry and the general staff are among those state bodies responsible for this task." Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday issued the decree, which stated that Russia is required to notify Kiev of its warships' movements within Ukrainian territory at least 72 hours in advance.

US and Poland Set Missile Deal - Shanker and Kulish, New York Times

The United States and Poland reached a long-stalled deal on Thursday to place an American missile defense base on Polish territory, in the strongest reaction so far to Russia’s military operation in Georgia. Russia reacted angrily, saying that the move would worsen relations with the United States that have already been strained severely in the week since Russian troops entered separatist enclaves in Georgia, a close American ally. But the deal reflected growing alarm in countries like Poland, once a conquered Soviet client state, about a newly rich and powerful Russia’s intentions in its former cold war sphere of power. In fact, negotiations dragged on for 18 months - but were completed only as old memories and new fears surfaced in recent days. Those fears were codified to some degree in what Polish and American officials characterized as unusual aspects of the final deal: that at least temporarily American soldiers would staff air defense sites in Poland oriented toward Russia, and that the United States would be obliged to defend Poland in case of an attack with greater speed than required under NATO, of which Poland is a member.

Medvedev Defiant on Response - Fredrick Kunkle, Washington Post

President Dmitry Medvedev remained defiant Friday in response to international criticism of his country's war with Georgia, as Russia's tanks and troops showed no sign of leaving its neighbor's territory three days after a truce was declared. Speaking in the Black Sea port of Sochi, Medvedev also had harsh words for an agreement that Poland and the United States signed Thursday to build an antimissile facility on Polish soil. The deal was "aimed at the Russian Federation," he said. A senior Russian general suggested that the base's presence might expose Poland to a military strike. .US leaders, who staunchly supported Georgia in the conflict, dialed up their rhetoric as well. President Bush told Russia to stop "bullying" its neighbor. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew into the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, to offer support and secure a signature to a peace document from President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Rice, in Georgia, Calls on Russia to Pull Out Now - Kramer and Levy, NY TImes

The United States pressed on Friday for the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces in Georgia, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came here, not far from the front lines, to win the Georgian president’s approval for a redefined cease-fire. She pushed to close a loophole that Russia could use to justify its advance deep into Georgia. As Ms. Rice spoke at a news conference, a Russian column of at least a dozen armored vehicles moved to within roughly 25 miles of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, by far the Russians’ closest approach to the city. The battle of angry words sharpened as well: the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, accused the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, of harboring “idiotic ideas” that had provoked the war.

Georgia Forced to Accept a Russian Occupation - Tony Halpin, The Australian

President Saakashvili was forced to accept defeat yesterday as he signed a peace agreement that gives the Russian Army the right to patrol on Georgian soil. In a critical amendment to the ceasefire drawn up by President Sarkozy of France, the Kremlin forced Mr Saakashvili to accept that Russian troops could control a buffer zone of Georgian territory up to 10km beyond the border of the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Mr Saakashvili was humiliated further when the final text of the agreement, delivered personally by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, removed a reference to Russian recognition of Georgia’s territorial integrity. It referred only to independence and sovereignty, a day after Ser-gei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said that the world could forget about Georgia’s territorial integrity.

Cease-Fire Is Not a Red Light - C. J. Chivers, New York TImes

The highway heading west from Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, has been one of the country’s main development projects under President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose government has been fond of calling it the “Sukhumi Highway.” The nickname is a reference to the capital of the separatist enclave of Abkhazia, which Mr. Saakashvili had hoped to wrest from Russian influence and bring under Georgian control. On Friday, the road flowed the opposite way. Russian armor used it to travel nearly to the edge of the Georgian capital, in defiance of a cease-fire agreement. The unexpected military advance demonstrated anew the powerlessness of Georgia’s security forces, which had no influence over the move even as it coincided with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s meeting with Mr. Saakashvili.

Defiant Russia Advances After Ceasefire - Daily Telegraph

Russia has defied a ceasefire agreement concluded in the presence of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and moved more troops into advanced positions deep inside Georgia. Despite a firm warning from the United States that Russian forces must withdraw and a Kremlin statement Moscow would "faithfully" abide by the terms of a ceasefire, military operations continued. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev today signed a French-brokered plan to end the fighting in Georgia, but the agreement allows Russian troops to control a buffer zone of Georgian territory surrounding the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Russian troops manoeuvred around the Gori and pushed deeper towards another town - Akhalgori - with a column of around 1,000 men, possibly South Ossetian irregulars. Another detachment remained just 25 miles from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, near the village of Igoeti, where they showed no signs of moving.

Harsh Words Heat Up Georgia Crisis - Daragahi and Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

The ongoing conflict over Georgia's breakaway regions prompted even harsher rhetoric from all sides Friday, including Russian anger over an accord to install a US missile defense system in Poland. As Moscow continued to insist on autonomy for the disputed Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused the United States of trying to encircle Russia by signing the agreement to install antimissile interceptors in Poland in the midst of the current crisis. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Tbilisi to meet Georgian President Mi- kheil Saakashvili, who signed a formal cease-fire. She echoed President Bush's demand that Russian troops withdraw from Georgia. Rice described Russia's incursion as an "attack," language sure to anger Moscow officials who insist that Georgia started the conflict over the fate of its secessionist-minded provinces that has spilled into Georgia proper.

Georgia Leader Signs Truce, But Will Russia Leave? - Associated Press

Georgia's president grudgingly signed a truce with Russia Friday, even as he denounced the Russians as invading barbarians and accused the West of all but encouraging them to overrun his country. A stone-faced Condoleezza Rice, standing alongside, said Russian troops must withdraw immediately from their smaller neighbor. President Bush talked tough, too, accusing the Russians of "bullying and intimidation," but neither he nor Rice said what the US might do if Russia ignored them. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's press office had no information Friday night on whether he had signed the cease-fire agreement. Russia's foreign minister assured Rice later that his country would implement the deal "faithfully," a US official said.

US Warns Russia To Halt 'Invasion' Of Georgia - Stefan Bos, Voice of America

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has condemned Russian military operations in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, saying the action reminds her of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. She spoke in Georgia where the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili declared that his country would never surrender despite Moscow's military might. In one of her strongest statements to date, Rice condemned what some have described as Russia's first foreign invasion since the Cold War ended. Georgia says Russia now controls one-third of the country, three days after Moscow accepted a European Union-brokered cease-fire. Rice said she no longer trusts Russian peacekeepers who have been present in Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made clear however that the world in his words "can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity." Georgian President Saakashvili responded that his country will never give up territory, including the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which seek closer ties with Russia.

Russian Convoy Moves Deeper Into Georgia - Voice of America

A Russian convoy has moved deeper into Georgia, advancing to about 50 kilometers from the capital, Tbilisi. News agency reports from the scene say 10 armored vehicles left the war-battered city of Gori headed toward the capital, but they stopped near the village of Igoeti. Russian troops have allowed some humanitarian supplies into Gori, after blocking access to the city for several days. Georgian authorities have been trying to re-enter the abandoned town, but so far have refused to endorse a proposal for South Ossetian police to patrol Gori. Russian officials told reporters Friday that they discovered a large depot of US-made weapons near the Georgian town of Senaki. US officials have not responded to the comment. In another development, Human Rights Watch said it has uncovered evidence that Russian aircraft dropped cluster bombs on Georgia.

Georgian Refugees' Plight is Grim - Megan Stack, Los Angeles Times

They squat in abandoned buildings, crash in rickety schoolhouses or sleep under bushes and trees. They stumble into the city wooden-faced and traumatized, children in tow, with little or nothing but the clothes they were wearing when they fled their houses. Tens of thousands of Georgians have been forced from their homes by days of fighting and Russian occupation, leaving this small country suddenly swamped in a major humanitarian crisis. Georgia is now packed with homeless and panicked families in desperate need of shelter, clothes, food and medicine. This week's cease-fire has not ended the suffering.

Georgia Conflict Casts Shadow Over US-Russian Relations - Voice of America

Diplomatic efforts are continuing in an effort to secure a cease-fire in Georgia and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the former Soviet Republic. Analysts say relations between the United States and Russia have deteriorated over the last few years. Some of the reasons included Moscow's more assertive foreign policy, its opposition to US efforts to place a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe and its strong objection to Washington's support of Ukraine and Georgia to become members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - or NATO. But experts say Moscow's recent massive military response in Georgia to Tbilisi's abortive attempt to take control of the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, has cast an even greater shadow on US - Russian relations.

Georgia Crisis Frays Web Linking Moscow and West - Associated Press

The struggle over a tiny, impoverished part of the Caucasus mountains has erupted into a widening confrontation between Russia and the West, the worst since the Soviet Union collapsed. The rift between Russia and the former Soviet state of Georgia over South Ossetia, a hilly land the size of Rhode Island, threatens a web of institutions spun since the end of the Cold War to tie Moscow to the US and Europe. One by one, the strands holding the web together are fraying. Even if the cease-fire holds in Georgia, the consequences of the crisis could be grim: Tensions might jeopardize Russian energy shipments to Europe, cut the US off from access to the International Space Station, end intelligence cooperation between Washington and Moscow in the war on terrorism.

Cease-Fire Accord Specifies Russian Troop Withdrawal from Georgia - AFPS

A cease-fire agreement signed today by the president of the former Soviet republic of Georgia calls for Russian troops to immediately leave his country, America’s senior diplomat said in the Georgian capital today. “And now, with the signature of the Georgian president on this cease-fire accord, all Russian troops and any irregular and paramilitary forces that entered with them must leave immediately,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a news conference in Tbilisi with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili at her side. President Bush dispatched Rice to Europe to assist in resolving a now week-long international crisis involving Georgia and Russia. On Aug. 8, Russian tanks and troops crossed the border into the contested northern Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, after Georgian military forces had clashed with separatists in South Ossetia the day before. The Russian troops caused Georgian forces to retreat south. Since then, the Russians have lodged themselves in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as in some Georgian municipalities farther south. Rice was in Tbilisi today, she said, to demonstrate “the solidarity of the United States with Georgia and its people in this moment of crisis.” The United States, she said, supports Georgia’s independence, its territorial integrity and its democratically elected government.

An Uneasy Calm in Gori - Associated Press

As diplomats try to get a cease-fire agreement between Georgia and Russia signed and put into place, an uneasy kind of calm has settled on Gori, occupied by the Russians and situated just south of South Ossetia. Russian armored vehicles rattle down near-empty streets, and the few remaining residents line up for bread and talk with the soldiers, who have restored a semblance of order. Many of the people who are left are rattled or frightened. Most buildings appear intact, though a few on the outskirts were burned. Electricity is scarce, and there are very few people left, most of them men or elderly. Younger people fled into the mountains or to Tbilisi.

Military Brings in Aid for Georgia - Kelly Hearn, Washington Times

The Pentagon has flown 86 tons of humanitarian supplies into the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on two C-17 and two C-130 aircraft as of Friday, a top military official said. The humanitarian aid - delivered through what military officials are calling a “sustained air bridge” - has taken the form of cots, sleeping bags, blankets and 1,200 pounds of antibiotics, said Rear Adm. Steven Romano, US European Command Director of Logistics. He said medical supplies such as splints, bandages and field examination tables had also been transported. Adm. Romano said he is in close contact with a US advanced assessment team currently on the ground in Georgia to find critical-need spots and access security.

'Comfort' is on Standby for Georgia Aid - David Wood, Baltimore Sun

With a $20 million, 24-nation aid effort under way for victims of the fighting in Georgia, the USNS Comfort, Baltimore's familiar white-hulled hospital ship, remains idle at its Canton pier, though on standby for possible deployment to the region. The Pentagon sent a military team into war-ravaged Georgia yesterday to determine what supplies are needed and the most effective ways to deliver them. Two Air Force C-17 cargo planes have already carried basic loads of shelter, food and clothing. The Comfort, with its 12 operating rooms and fully staffed 1,000-bed hospital, could provide badly needed medical services. The ship is also capable of producing large quantities of fresh water. But Lt. Cmdr. Steven Pigman, an administrative officer on board the Comfort, said it would take five days to get under way. Most of that time is required to load food and medical stores and assemble its medical and support staff of 1,000 to 1,200 people.

Georgia Transportation Plan Demonstrates US Flexibility, Responsiveness - AFPS

The transport of more than 1,800 Georgian soldiers from Iraq to Tbilisi and humanitarian supplies from Germany to Georgia highlights the flexibility and responsiveness the US military manifests, a senior US Transportation Command officer said today. “When this requirement came up, we had to figure out how do we make this happen quickly,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael C. Gould, TransCom’s director of operations and plans, aid in an interview today. “We had to get the Georgian troops back, and sustain what we have going in Iraq and Afghanistan.” When the Russians attacked into South Ossetia last week, US planners around the world quickly surged into motion and TransCom coordinated plans to accomplish these missions. The Georgian government had sent a brigade’s worth of troops to Iraq as part of the coalition. The US government had promised Georgian leaders that the troops would be transported home quickly if needed. The Russian invasion of Georgia fit that bill. Gould said TransCom leaders worked closely with planners from the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command and with the operators at US Central Command. Within 36 hours, the Air Force began flying the Georgians back to their capital at Tbilisi. Some of that time was spent collecting the Georgians from their duty stations in and around Baghdad and from Baqouba.

Propagandists Turn to Dick Cheney Plot - Charles Bremner, The Australian

Russians were told over breakfast yesterday what really happened in Georgia: the conflict in South Ossetia was part of a plot by US Vice-President Dick Cheney to stop Barack Obama being elected president of the US. The line came on the main news of Vesti FM, a state radio station that - like the Government and much of Russia's media - has reverted to the old habits of Soviet years, inwhich a sinister US hand washeld to lie behind every conflict, especially those embarrassing to Moscow. Modern Russia may be plugged into the internet and the global marketplace but in the battle for world opinion the Kremlin is replaying the old black and white movie. The Obama angle is getting wide play. It was aired on Wednesday by Sergei Markov, a senior political scientist who isclose to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. "George Bush's administration is promoting interests of candidate John McCain," Dr Markov said.

NEWS VIDEOS

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright speak with reporters about the US response to the Georgia-Russia crisis on 14 August Daily Telegraph News Update Associated Press News Update

Mythmaking in Moscow - New York Times editorial

The events of the past week in the small Caucasus republic of Georgia will prompt animated debates about Russia and US-Russian relations. We view the events as confirmation of the dangerous challenge posed by an authoritarian regime unwilling to recognize the sovereignty of its former imperial possessions. Many will take issue with our interpretation, and that is as it should be. But the debate should be based on facts. Instead, assertions of the Russian leadership that have proved contrary to fact continue to circulate.

The New Chill - Washington Post editorial

Russia’s brazen invasion of Georgia has raised a host of chilling questions that Americans and many others around the world had hoped were long settled. Is Russia a threat — to its neighbors, to Europe, to the United States? What are the United States and its NATO allies prepared to do if Russia blackmails or attacks another sovereign democratic nation that is not a member of the alliance? Should the West continue to engage Russia or focus more on containing its ambitions? President Bush has begun a crisis-induced reassessment of America’s ties with Russia that his successor will have to revise and implement.

Making Putin Pay - Wall Street Journal editorial

Vladimir Putin proved last weekend that Russia's army can push over Georgia's army. In the past 48 hours, the West has begun to push back. If its leaders stay the course, they may yet turn Mr. Putin's meager military success into a significant political defeat. In Washington yesterday, President Bush issued a statement of precisely the sort the world expects from American leadership in such circumstances. It made clear what he understands to be Mr. Putin's goals and made equally clear the intention to resist those goals, and why doing so is in the world's interests.

Russia's Brutal Invasion - Washington Times editorial

Russia's brutal invasion of Georgia is a damaging blow to the prestige and reputation of US-led NATO -- a major cornerstone of US military security strategy in Europe since the end of World War II. And the decision by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ( implemented by his handpicked successor as president, Dimitry Medvedev) to invade and occupy Georgian territory is aimed at preventing that democratic US ally from joining NATO and sending a clear message to another target of Russian bullying, Ukraine. The message is that if President Yuschenko's government joins NATO, Moscow will seek its dismemberment -- just as it is doing today in Georgia.

Georgia Invasion - Philadelphia Inquirer editorial

After enjoying a few days at the Olympics, President Bush is saying and doing all the right things regarding the ongoing Russian invasion and occupation of a neighboring state. "The United States of America stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia," he said Wednesday. "We insist that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected." Bush was right to call the Russians on their continuing violations of a barely day-old cease-fire brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He was also right to task Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the US military with providing humanitarian relief to the Georgians. That's the right organization for the task. And unlike Georgian civilians, American forces would be more than capable of defending themselves, should that be necessary. Bush is also right to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice overseas in response to the crisis.

Russia Must Not Dictate NATO Membership - Damien McElroy, Daily Telegraph

David Cameron, the opposition leader, warned Russia must not be allowed to dictate the composition of NATO as he met with Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili to express British solidarity with the beleaguered nation. Standing side-by-side with Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze, Mr Cameron said Russia must immediately end its “illegal” invasion of its Caucasian neighbour. “I think it’s important that the world’s oldest democracy must stand with one of the newest when it’s been illegally invaded by another country,” he said. “We wanted to come to express the strongest possible support of the British people, British government and British opposition for Georgia, its independence and integrity. But as Mr Cameron spoke, Russian forces moved at will across a broad swathe of Georgia, in defiance of yesterday’s ceasefire agreement. Troops encroached on more Georgian towns and patrolled the Black Sea port of Poti.

Strongman Putin on the Blitz - Greg Sheridan, The Australian

You have to hand it to the Bush administration. It is very ballsy. Even in its dying days, with its military stretched in the Middle East, it managed, after an initial few days of dithering and hoping the Russians would come to their senses, to find a remarkably effective response to the Russian invasion of Georgia. The US sent its military to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia. It did this after the Russians had committed to a ceasefire. The Georgians immediately and deliberately misinterpreted the move as meaning that the US would be guarding Georgia's seaports and airports. No, that's not right, US spokesmen said. We're not doing that. But we do expect that the Russians will not interfere with humanitarian aid. And we will be protecting our assets. This was a brave and dangerous move by the Americans. But it was calibrated. It was tough. And it might just do enough to keep the pro-Western Government of Georgia's President, Mikheil Saakashvili, in power.

Russia's Georgia Win - Ralph Peters, New York Post

As the Russian Dark Lord's shadow falls across the shires of freedom once again, the response from the West has been confused, belated and inadequate: fear eclipsed courage; ignorance masqueraded as wisdom; and, in "Old Europe," greed vanquished justice. Russia won. Diplomacy failed. No state or alliance will reverse the decision. When President Bush spoke out strongly on Friday, Moscow ignored him: Words mean nothing to Prime Minister Putin, a man who regards all compromise as weakness. Instead of backing down, Russia suggested that Poland might become a nuclear target for agreeing to host our defensive missile system.

No Cold War, but Big Chill Over Georgia - Steven Lee Myers, New York Times

“The cold war is over,” President Bush declared Friday, but a new era of enmity between the United States and Russia has emerged nevertheless. It may not be as tense as the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, for now, but it could become as strained. Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has shattered, perhaps irrevocably, the strategy of three successive presidential administrations to coax Russia into alliance with the West and integration into its institutions. From Russia’s point of view, those efforts were never truly sincere or respectful of its own legitimate political and security interests. Those interests, it is now clear, are at odds with those of Europe and the United States. As much as Mr. Bush has argued that the old characterizations of the cold war are no longer germane, he drew a new line at the White House on Friday morning between countries free and not free, and bluntly put Russia on the other side of it.

In Georgia, Hazards of Proxy War - David Wood, Baltimore Sun

In the early 1990s, the United States began beefing up Georgia's army as the tiny republic gained independence from the collapsing Soviet Union -- an effort accelerated after 9/11 in what President Bush said was a fight against al-Qaida. That "train and equip" program is part of a growing, global US initiative to bolster military forces in such unlikely and unstable places as Ethiopia. Chad, Albania, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon and Yemen. But critics, pointing to the week's violent events in Georgia, say it is a dangerous form of proxy warfare that can get out of hand. Indeed, after receiving American training and equipment worth more than $1.5 billion since 1992, Georgia used its military forces last week in a confrontation, not against al-Qaida terrorists, but with Russia. Georgia's bid to reassert control over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia exploded into an international crisis.

Crisis in Georgia: How Misha Messed Up - Mark Mackinnon, Globe and Mail

As fighting raged all over his tiny former Soviet country this week, a CNN anchor asked Georgia's brash and unpredictable President Mikhail Saakashvili whether he had believed his country could actually win a military showdown with Russia. "I'm not crazy," the President answered in his American-inflected English. Others weren't so sure. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev charged that Mr. Saakashvili had acted like a "lunatic" in provoking the conflict and said he needed to be removed from office. A French diplomat suggested Mr. Saakashvili had been mad to take on Russia, and American officials wondered how he could have so badly misread their signals calling for restraint in his efforts to reclaim the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Many of his own people are shaking their heads at how "Misha," as he is affectionately known, could have backed their country into such a dangerous corner.

'We Are All Georgians'? Not So Fast. - Michael Dobbs, Washington Post

It didn't take long for the "Putin is Hitler" analogies to start following the eruption of the ugly little war between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia. Neoconservative commentator Robert Kagan compared the Russian attack on Georgia with the Nazi grab of the Sudetenland in 1938. President Jimmy Carter's former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said that the Russian leader was following a course "that is horrifyingly similar to that taken by Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s." Others invoked the infamous Brezhnev doctrine, under which Soviet leaders claimed the right to intervene militarily in Eastern Europe in order to prop up their crumbling imperium. "We've seen this movie before, in Prague and Budapest," said John McCain, referring to the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956. According to the Republican presidential candidate,"today we are all Georgians." Actually, the events of the past week in Georgia have little in common with either Hitler's dismemberment of Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II or Soviet policies in Eastern Europe. They are better understood against the backdrop of the complica ted ethnic politics of the Caucasus, a part of the world where historical grudges run deep and oppressed can become oppressors in the bat of an eye.

What Is To Be Done? - Frederick Kagan, Weekly Standard

The Cold War isn't back. The Russian attacks on Georgia don't mean American soldiers will soon be staring at Red Army soldiers in the middle of Germany or that U.S. defense spending must triple to match a global Russian military juggernaut. But Vladimir Putin's aggression, and the justifications offered for it by Russian leaders, could nevertheless mark a historic turning point. They are a deliberate assault on the structure of international norms and on Western credibility. The West's response to this assault has so far been anemic. American rhetoric about Russia's actions has been strong but has not deterred Putin from pushing even harder. France's president, Nicholas Sarkozy, went from Moscow to Tbilisi with a Russian ultimatum in his hand disguised as a compromise armistice. Georgia's president, Mikhail Saakashvili, signed it while parts of his country were occupied by Russian troops and Russian military aircraft circled overhead. If Sarkozy believes that he has brought peace in our time, he's in for a disappointment. The countries that responded most courageously are those most vulnerable to the imperialistic precedent Putin is attempting to establish--the Baltic States, Ukraine, Poland, and Azerbaijan. The choice before the West now is very clear: We either help those states--and Georgia--protect themselves, or we serve as midwife to a reborn Russian Empire and an international order that is red in tooth and claw.

When the War Ends, Start to Worry - Michael Bronner, New York Times

Even as Russia and Georgia continue their on-again, off-again struggle over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a frenzied tea-leaf reading about the war’s global political ramifications has broken out across airwaves and think-tank forums. But as the situation on the ground recedes inevitably to some new form of the pernicious “frozen conflict” that has plagued the region since Georgia’s civil wars of the early 1990s, few are paying attention to a less portentous but equally critical international threat: an increase in the longstanding, rampant criminality in the conflict zones that is likely to further destabilize the entire Caucasus region and at worst provide terrorist groups with the nuclear material they have long craved. While the Russian “peacekeepers” who entrenched themselves in the conflict zones in the 1990s (and who will now likely resume their posts anew) have proved ineffectual and uninterested in maintaining stability, they’ve been highly successful in protecting an array of sophisticated criminal networks stretching from Russia through Georgian territory. South Ossetia, in particular, is a nest of organized crime. It is a marketplace for a variety of contraband, from fuel to cigarettes, wheat flour, hard drugs, weapons, people and, recently, counterfeit United States $100 bills “minted” at a press inside the conflict zone.

History's Back - Robert Kagan, Weekly Standard

One wonders whether Russia's invasion of Georgia will finally end the dreamy complacency that took hold of the world's democracies after the close of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union offered for many the tantalizing prospect of a new kind of international order. The fall of the Communist empire and the apparent embrace of democracy by Russia seemed to augur a new era of global convergence. Great power conflict and competition were a thing of the past. Geo-economics had replaced geopolitics. Nations that traded with one another would be bound together by their interdependence and less likely to fight one another. Increasingly commercial societies would be more liberal both at home and abroad. Their citizens would seek prosperity and comfort and abandon the atavistic passions, the struggles for honor and glory, and the tribal hatreds that had produced conflict throughout history. Ideological conflict was also a thing of the past. As Francis Fukuyama famously put it, "At the end of history, there are no serious ideological competitors left to liberal democracy." And if there were an autocracy or two lingering around at the end of history, this was no cause for concern. They, too, would eventually be transformed as their economies modernized. Unfortunately, the core assumptions of the post-Cold War years have proved mistaken. The absence of great power competition, it turns out, was a brief aberration.

Don't Abandon Georgia to Moscow - Marcus Gee, Globe and Mail

Foolish Georgians for baiting the Russian bear. Silly Americans for egging them on. Armchair strategists are wagging fingers over the supposed naiveté of Georgia and its superpower ally over the conflict in the Caucasus. In this blame-the-victim analysis, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili started the whole thing by attacking separatists in South Ossetia, giving Russian leader Vladimir Putin the perfect excuse to respond in force. Washington encouraged the Georgian hothead by pumping him up with praise and making him think that it would gallop to his aid, while in fact it has no power at all to help. The facts are somewhat different. While Mr. Saakashvili blundered at the start and Washington underestimated the Russians, it is wrong to place the blame on the Georgians and their American allies. That blame rests squarely with Moscow, which orchestrated the whole business with the skill of a Shostakovich.

Blaming the Victim - Matthew Continetti, Weekly Standard

Blaming the victim is nothing new. But, in the days since Russian tanks first rolled into democratic Georgia, we have been rather surprised at the alacrity with which some--on both the left and right--have blamed that tiny country for the onslaught, and the West for encouraging Georgia's liberalization. That encouragement, it has been argued, led Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili to believe he could use military force to quell insurgents in the breakaway province of South Ossetia, thereby all but guaranteeing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's retaliatory assault. This is not just a foolish argument, it is a pernicious one. It masks the true nature of the conflict and assumes that all the actors in this drama are moral equals. They are not. Putin has been pressuring Georgia for years. Indeed, Russian despots have long considered the southern Caucasus, along with Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, their personal stomping grounds. There is no need to rehearse the long, complicated, and bloody history; suffice it to say that the tradition did not end with the Soviet empire. In the Caucasus, for example, Russia almost certainly had a hand in the fall of Georgian nationalist president Zviad Gamsakhurdia in 1992, as well as that of Azerbaijan's president Abulfaz Elchibey in 1993. Both were replaced by pro-Moscow strongmen. But Russian hegemony over Georgia was upset in November 2003, when the pro-Western democrat Saakashvili came to power.

US Again Blindsided by Events Overseas - David Olive, Toronto Star

The most surprising thing about Russia's attack on Georgia is that Washington's foreign policy establishment was surprised. Once again, the world's largest intel community - America has about two dozen intelligence agencies - allowed the US to be blindsided by foreseeable events. It did so in failing to alert America to the looming 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union; the destructive activities of Al Qaeda in the 1990s, culminating in the attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001; and the absence of a casus belli - the phantom weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq - for the Bush administration's witless invasion of that sovereign nation. Russia was immediately dubbed the bad guy in its inexcusable killing of Georgian civilians in support of the semi-autonomous, Russian-backed Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But Russia for years has been signalling its displeasure with Western encroachment on its sphere of influence.

Peace Accord Sarkozy Gave to Georgians - New York Times transcript
Timeline: Key Events in Russian-Georgian Relations - Associated Press
Day-by-Day: South Ossetia Crisis - BBC News
Q&A on Georgia - New York Times

Pledging to Leave, Russia Tightens Grip - Michael Gordon, New York Times

Even as Russia pledged to begin withdrawing its forces from neighboring Georgia on Monday, American officials said the Russian military had been moving launchers for short-range ballistic missiles into South Ossetia, a step that appeared intended to tighten its hold on the breakaway territory. The Russian military deployed several SS-21 missile launchers and supply vehicles to South Ossetia on Friday, according to American officials familiar with intelligence reports. From the new launching positions north of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, the missiles can reach much of Georgia, including Tbilisi, the capital.

Russia Vows Pullout as Troops Dig In - Jonathan Finer, Washington Post

Russia pledged Sunday to begin removing its troops from Georgia on Monday, but the streets of this occupied city reflected a broadening, not a waning, of Russia's military incursion. President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to "begin the withdrawal of the military contingent" starting Monday. Russian leaders have made contradictory and at times clearly false statements about their troops' plans and positions ever since the Georgia operation began. On Saturday, a top Russian general told reporters that his country had no troops in Gori. During a reporter's 24-hour stay in the city this weekend, Russian soldiers roamed the streets in armored personnel carriers and waved Kalashnikov rifles to prevent entry to a captured Georgian military base that is now the Russian headquarters. Russian soldiers dug fortified positions for tanks along highways east and west of Gori and trucked in television and radio equipment to begin broadcasting in their own language.

Russia Again Says Will Begin Withdrawal - Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times

The Kremlin said Sunday that Russia's military would begin withdrawing its forces from Georgia today, though it was not immediately clear how far or how fast the troops would move. Germany's leader, meanwhile, voiced strong support for this former Soviet republic's desire to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a goal that has fed Moscow's anger toward Georgia and the West. The Kremlin statement followed repeated US and European calls for Russia to honor a cease-fire agreement it signed Saturday and pull troops out of Georgia proper. But Russia made no mention of leaving the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where it has long stationed peacekeepers.

Moscow Promises to Withdraw Today - The Australian

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev last night promised to start withdrawing his forces from Georgia today after they built ramparts around tanks and posted sentries on a hill just outside the Georgian capital yesterday. Mr Medvedev made the promise after the US accused Moscow of breaking the French-brokered ceasefire he signed on Saturday. Mr Sarkozy warned Mr Medvedev that Russia's relations with the European Union would be seriously damaged if Moscow failed to fully implement the peace deal. However, the troops will leave behind a peacekeeping force of unspecified size that Georgian officials worry could turn into an open-ended Russian military presence. The US and France said earlier it appeared Russia was already defying the truce signed at the weekend. Russian troops still controlled Gori and Senaki as well as the key east-west highway between the two cities well outside the breakaway provinces where earlier fighting was focused. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said late last night Russia was defying the truce.

NATO Torn Between Threats and Caution - Michael Evans, The Times

Britain is pushing to suspend security co-operation with Russia as its aggressive actions in Georgia expose deep divisions within Nato as to how Moscow should be punished. NATO foreign ministers are meeting for a special session on Georgia in Brussels tomorrow. Already there is disagreement between the United States and Britain on one side, which want to take a tough approach, and Germany and France, which are urging a more cautious stance. They are likely to block attempts to send Nato military monitors into Georgia. “We don’t want to leave the Russians out in the cold but we want to make it clear to Moscow that it’s no longer going to be business as usual,” one British diplomatic source said.

Sarkozy Demands that Russia Comply with Cease Fire - Associated Press

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned Russia's president Sunday of "serious consequences" in Moscow's relations with the European Union, if Russia does not comply with its cease-fire accord with Georgia. In a telephone call, Sarkozy told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that there must be a "withdrawal, without delay, of all the Russian military forces that entered Georgia since Aug. 7," Sarkozy's office said in a statement. Medvedev promised the troop pullout would start Monday around midday, the statement said. Sarkozy, whose country holds the presidency of the 27-nation EU, helped broker the cease-fire agreement.

No Signs of Russia Claim of Genocide - Megan Stack, Los Angeles Times

A visit to this war-strafed city Sunday turned up no proof of Russian claims that more than 2,000 people died here. Nor were there any ready signs of what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin referred to as "genocide." The downtown of Tskhinvali, the capital of Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia, sustained heavy damage in a five-day barrage of rockets and missiles as Russian troops and their local allies battled Georgian forces, and dozens of deaths have been documented. There is still no running water in the city, and residents are tremulous and shellshocked. Tskhinvali Regional Hospital had confirmed the deaths of 40 people as of Sunday, though the number was expected to grow, said Tina Zakharova, an Ossetian doctor who showed The Times a log of deaths. That figure included both civilians and combatants: people who died at the hospital, whose bodies were brought to the hospital or whose families reported burying their dead in villages.

Abkhazia Wrests Gorge From Georgia - Michael Schwirtz, New York Times

A Georgian flag lies crumpled in the dirt. A wrinkled photograph of students at what appears to be this year’s graduation is close by. Both are outside a school where rebel soldiers now munch on Russian military-issued rations in this mountainous strip of territory that was briefly part of Georgia but has now been largely abandoned. The government of Abkhazia, a separatist Georgian enclave, now controls the Kodori Gorge region. With the Georgian military consumed last week by fighting about 120 miles away in South Ossetia, leaving Georgia’s west largely devoid of its presence, Abkhaz troops seized the Kodori Gorge almost without a fight. They were aided by a heavy aerial bombardment that Georgians assert was probably carried out by Russian jets.

US Watched as a Squabble Turned Into a Showdown - New York Times

Five months ago, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, long a darling of this city’s diplomatic dinner party circuit, came to town to push for America to muscle his tiny country of four million into NATO. On Capitol Hill, at the State Department and at the Pentagon, Mr. Saakashvili, brash and hyperkinetic, urged the West not to appease Russia by rejecting his country’s NATO ambitions. At the White House, President Bush bantered with the Georgian president about his prowess as a dancer. Laura Bush, the first lady, took Mr. Saakashvili’s wife to lunch. Mr. Bush promised him to push hard for Georgia’s acceptance into NATO. After the meeting, Mr. Saakashvili pronounced his visit “one of the most successful visits during my presidency,” and said he did not know of any other leader of a small country with the access to the administration that he had.

'New Europe' Urges West to Rethink Russian Ties - Robert Marquand, CS Monitor

They live in a historically battered region between West and East, the Rhine and the Volga, Berlin and Moscow. Now, as Russian tanks rumble in Georgia, the states of "new Europe" are urging the West to rethink its relationship with Russia and are pushing for new security and strong measures against an aggressive Moscow they say they know all too well. From Poland to Ukraine, the Czech Republic to Bulgaria, Russia's invasion of Georgia with tanks, troops, and planes is described as a test of Western resolve. The former Soviet states are vowing to thwart Russian aims – in deals with the European Union, in a missile-defense pact with the US, and in trade and diplomacy. Polish and Baltic officials, most of whom grew up under Soviet occupation, have long chafed at being described in Western Europe as too "Russia-phobic" in their oft-repeated warnings about Moscow's intentions. But now in this gritty capital, the refrain is, "We told you so."

Ukraine Ready to Join the Missile Shield - The Australian

Ukraine has offered to create a joint missile defence network with the West amid fears its port city of Sebastopol, home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, could become the next flashpoint between Russia and its former satellites. The proposal could see Ukraine added to Moscow's hit list. The Ukrainian offer means its Soviet-era early-warning radar stations could become part of the West's civil defence system. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said his country could ensure its sovereignty only through collective security. Last week, Kiev limited the freedom of movement of Russia's Black Sea fleet - announcing it would require the Russian fleet to seek permission whenever ships entered its territorial waters. The move came after several of the fleet's warships, based at Sebastopol in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, were deployed along the Georgian coastline. Moscow denounced the restrictions as anti-Russian, and said its military commanders would answer only to the Russian President himself.

Shevardnadze Faults Russia - Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post

In November 2003, Georgia's Rose Revolution toppled President Eduard Shevardnadze, and he retired to his gated residence in Tbilisi to watch his flashy successor take the country on a roller-coaster ride of reform, economic development and increasingly tense relations with Russia. On Sunday, 10 days after that tension spilled over into a war that has devastated Georgia's infrastructure, displaced 100,000 people and shaken the national psyche, Shevardnadze would not say whether he thought Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was wrong to send military forces into Tskhinvali, capital of the separatist region of South Ossetia. But Shevardnadze, known as the "Silver Fox," criticized the deterioration of Georgian-Russian relations under Saakashvili, especially in regard to the breakaway regions whose reintegration the current president has pushed for so vehemently.

What Future for NATO? - Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor

The Russian Army's foray into Georgia this month has had enormous international impact. But the actions of its conventional forces served more to send a message to the West than to pose any significant military challenge much past its borders. The immediate crisis in Georgia appears to be over for now. But as the West assesses what is clearly a new geopolitical dynamic in Eurasia, there is recognition that while Russia's military may not be as formidable as it once was, NATO and other Western allies must adapt quickly to counter the threat it does pose to its immediate neighbors. That will undoubtedly lead to a broader debate about the future of NATO, its membership roster, and the resources it will need to create a viable impediment to Russia's military, whatever Moscow's ambitions may be. But for now, it seems obvious that Russia has used its forces to send a clear message that it won't be ignored.

Conflict a Blow to Bush Foreign Policy - Julian Barnes, Los Angeles Times

In the last week, two major pillars of President Bush's approach to foreign policy have crumbled, jeopardizing eight years of work and sending the administration scrambling for new strategies in the waning months of its term. From the earliest days of his presidency, Bush had said spreading democracy was a centerpiece of his foreign policy. At the same time, he sought to develop a more productive relationship with Russia, seeking Moscow's cooperation on issues such as terrorism, Iran's nuclear program and expansion of global energy supplies. And in pursuing both these major goals, Bush relied heavily on developing what he saw as strong personal relationships with foreign leaders. The recent setbacks to the president's approach were all the more unsettling because Georgia had appeared to be one of the few success stories in the administration's effort to nurture new democracies that could advance US interests.

News Analysis: Europe’s Putin Dilemma - Steven Erlanger, New York Times

As NATO foreign ministers gather Tuesday for an emergency meeting on the Georgian crisis, Europe is divided over how to balance its ties to Russia with concerns over the country’s new aggressiveness. The European dilemma is clear, said Clifford Kupchan, a director of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm in Washington. “How do they square their increasing energy dependence on Russia with their increasing political discomfort with Putin?” he said, referring to Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. “It’s a very hard circle to square.” As the United States looks for more than symbolic gestures on how to support Georgia and another former Soviet republic, Ukraine, there is a split between “old and new Europe” - roughly Western and Eastern Europe, Mr. Kupchan said. New Europe, backed by Britain and Scandinavia, is taking a harder line toward Russia, while old Europe “will only be reinforced in its view that Georgia and Ukraine are not ready for NATO.”

Debacle in Georgia - Washington Times editorial

Russia's invasion of Georgia is a damaging blow to the prestige and reputation of the US-led NATO alliance - a major cornerstone of US military security strategy in Europe since the end of World War II. The decision by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the government he dominates to attack Georgia serves a number of critical Russian strategic goals. First, it is a warning to other nations in Europe and the Caucasus that they put themselves in mortal danger if they seek to join NATO and align themselves with United States. Target number one is Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko - who like Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is the democratically elected leader of a formerly Soviet-occupied nation and has applied to join NATO. Second, it is a step toward seizing monopoly control of major energy pipelines supplying the West which run through Georgia: The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, opened two years ago, which transports oil from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Georgia to Ceyhan, Turkey, and the South Caucasus gas pipeline, which runs parallel to the BTC pipeline. Third, it is part of a longer-range effort to create a sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union and beyond. Fourth, it is part of a policy that emboldens Iran by intimidating neighboring states away from military cooperation with Washington.

The Future of NATO - The Times editorial

Russia's Ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, wrote last month that “with the demise of communism, reasons for the West and Russia to be in confrontation vanished”. He would be hard put to stand by his remark when NATO meets tomorrow for an emergency summit forced on its members by Russia's invasion of Georgia, especially given its troops' continued presence there despite two ceasefire deals, its extraordinary threat to Poland last Friday, and reports that it is considering arming its Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads for the first time since the Cold War. As it happens, Mr Rogozin was wrong. There have been myriad reasons for confrontation between the West and Russia since 1991. The implosion of a hollow ideology gave way to a series of more practical grounds for dispute, from Washington's passion for missile defence to Moscow's foot-dragging over Iranian uranium enrichment. But there has been no provocation quite so blatant as the flooding of South Ossetia and parts of Georgia with Russian tanks. NATO has so far floundered in response, but this does not make it irrelevant. The opposite is true.

Putting Out Fires in the Caucasus - Nicolas Sarkozy, Washington Post opinion

The time will come when the sequence of events and responsibilities can be established in an indisputable and impartial manner: several weeks of provocations and skirmishes along the lines separating South Ossetia from the rest of Georgia; the thoughtless Georgian military intervention in South Ossetia the night of Aug. 7-8; the brutal and disproportionate response of Russian troops, driving the small Georgian army from South Ossetia and dislodging it from Abkhazia -- the other separatist province, where it had regained a foothold in 2006 -- before occupying part of the rest of Georgian territory. As the world was confronted with this outburst of violence, there were more urgent matters. As soon as hostilities broke out, France and Europe engaged in a full-fledged diplomatic effort. The first priority was to obtain a cease-fire, end the suffering of populations and stop the destruction. For that, conditions had to be created ensuring that both the Russians and Georgians would accept the cease-fire. Against the advice of many, who assured us we would fail, I and my foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, traveled to Moscow and Tbilisi on Aug. 12, armed with proposals to convince the Russians that it was past time for them to lay down their weapons and to convince the Georgians that they had still more to lose by continuing to fight. My long conversations with Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin during the day and with Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi during the night finally made it possible to gain the two parties' agreement to a six-point plan to end the crisis.

Bad News Bear - Peter Brookes, New York Post opinion

The Russian bear is back. Today's Kremlin is cocky, nationalistic, rich and bent on asserting Russia as a great power with distinct interests - not only in its neighborhood or "near abroad" - but across the globe. It entered 2008 in its strongest position since the fall of the Berlin Wall, continually reorienting its foreign policy to one that is independent, strikingly outspoken, and even anti-West. Russia is vying to lord over its traditional sphere of influence (like Imperialist Russia) and take its place on the world stage as a power-broker (like the Soviet Union). Quite simply: The Kremlin plans to reinstate Russia's superpower status.

Russia and the Future - Michael O'Hanlon, Washington Times opinion

Russia's bullying and brutal behavior toward Georgia this August has been inexcusable. But even for those of us who assign Russia at least 80 to 90 percent of the blame for the hostilities, it is important to ask if any Western actions or policies should be modified in the future to avoid worsening the problem. In doing so, we need to keep our national security priorities in mind. Many issues that have divided the United States from Russia of late, such as independence for Kosovo, are not first-tier matters for the United States. By contrast, securing Russia's cooperation in opposing Iran's march toward a nuclear weapon, pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal, and trying to keep the peace in South and Central Asia are top-level priorities. We make a mistake by needlessly picking fights over secondary things if that harms our ability to cooperate on truly crucial matters.

NATO's Hour - Ronald Asmus, Wall Street Journal opinion

Russia's invasion of Georgia is a game changer. This war is part of a Russian strategy of roll-back and regime change on its borders. The more evidence that comes in, the clearer it is becoming that this is a conflict Moscow planned, prepared for and provoked - a trap Tbilisi unfortunately walked into. A core Western assumption since 1991 - that Moscow would never again invade its neighbors - has been shattered. As Moscow basks in its moment of nationalistic triumphalism, the West needs to take steps to prevent further Russian moves from spreading instability to others parts of Europe. If they want to contain this crisis, NATO foreign ministers meeting here tomorrow need to focus on two strategic imperatives. The Alliance must take steps to reassure those members fearing Russian pressure that NATO's mutual-defense commitments are credible and real. And ministers must consider speeding up enlargement plans to lock in stability in the Balkans and bring in Ukraine and the southern Caucasus.

Russia Cannot Afford to be Isolated - William Rees-Mogg, The Times opinion

I feel sure that a debate is going on between the hawks and doves in the Kremlin. I am confident of that because such debates always do exist. There must be equally patriotic Russians, in senior official positions, who see the Georgian campaign as part of Vladimir Putin's restoration of Russian self-respect or as dangerous adventurism. In times of crisis, decision-makers inevitably divide into hawks, regarded by critics as “reckless warmongers”, and doves, regarded as “cowardly appeasers”. Such divisions exist in the EU and in the US. In Russia, there is no doubt that the hawks are in the ascendant. The leading hawk is Mr Putin, the Prime Minister. One should remember that all politics is ultimately domestic. Mr Putin wants to impress Russia's neighbours with its power and armed might. But he also wants to impress the electorate.

The Bear is Back from Hibernation - Paul Dibb, The Australian opinion

Russia's attack on Georgia shows that it is back as a force to be reckoned with. It reflects Moscow's view that the US and NATO are not to be taken seriously when it comes to what it calls its "near abroad" blizhnoe zarubezhe'e. The message being sent to Ukraine and the Baltic countries is brutally clear: Russia is returning to great power status and that is being demonstrated to them by its military operations in Georgia. This is the first time Russia has used military force against another state since the USSR pulled out of Afghanistan. In the intervening two decades, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and Russia experienced a massive collapse of its economic and military power and a dramatic reduction in its importance in world affairs. Worse still, despite promises to the contrary by the US, NATO has expanded its presence to the very borders of Russia and occupied parts of the former Soviet strategic space in the Baltic countries and Eastern Europe. Now, the US wants Ukraine and Georgia to become members of the alliance. This has angered Moscow enormously. Russia rejects American criticism of its invasion of Georgia and responds that "the invaders and occupiers of Iraq" lack the moral authority to offer such criticism. It points to the evidence that Georgian aggression against South Ossetia was responsible for Russia's military response.

Who Made Russia Attack? - Fred Hiatt, Washington Post opinion

As Russian forces loot and occupy a neighboring state, conscripting Georgian civilians at gunpoint to sweep their city streets, it's not uncommon, in Moscow or in Washington, to find America at fault. Russia has gone over to the dark side - or, in the Moscow version, has finally stood up for itself - in understandable reaction to US disrespect, according to this view. And the next president should learn a lesson from this: that there are limits to how far Russia can or should be pushed. This narrative of American provocation cites a long list of grievances, but the principal and original sin is NATO expansion. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States encouraged the newly free nations of Central and Eastern Europe to join a military alliance whose founding purpose had been containment of the USSR. Russia hated the idea from the start, and the United States should have known that Moscow, once it recovered its strength, would exact retribution.

A Middle Road in Azerbaijan - Gregory Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times opinion

There's probably no country in the world watching the Russia-Georgia conflict more intently than this small, energy-rich nation to the south and east of the turmoil. It too leans toward the West. Its oil runs through the pipeline that crosses Georgia. And it too wants to know how far Russia will go to keep its former vassal states within its sphere of influence. Azerbaijan was one of the first Soviet republics to win independence. It's a rare secular Muslim nation with a tradition of religious tolerance - it enjoys friendly relations with Israel. It also signed on to the US-led war on terrorism, contributing troops to coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it has felt some heat from other Muslim nations because of it. But as friendly to the West as Azerbaijan is, it is under no illusions about its place in the world. It is betwixt and between superpowers and religious and ethnic groups in a volatile neighborhood. And unlike headstrong Georgia, which clearly miscalculated the extent to which the West would come to its aid, Azerbaijanis don't lean too far in any direction. They seem intent on pursuing a sometimes torturous process of diplomacy, compromise and caution.

No Sign of Russian Departure in Georgia - Bahrampour and Finer, Washington Post

Russian troops remained camped out Monday in a Georgian military base in this western city and in a nearby house said to be the Georgian president's vacation retreat, showing no sign of leaving on what Moscow called Day One of a pullout from Georgia. A field down the road toward the town of Senaki was filled with Russian tanks, artillery and nervous-looking soldiers who cocked their automatic weapons as reporters approached. In the central city of Gori, meanwhile, Russian troops snapped souvenir photos of each other. Russian armored vehicles moved eastward from the town to a point about 30 miles from the capital, Tbilisi, and plowed aside Georgian police vehicles at a checkpoint.

Russia Hunkering Down in Georgia - Andrew Kramer, New York Times

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.

Russia Defies the West and Ceasefire - Halpin and Bremner, The Times

The Russian Army continued to occupy Georgia in defiance of the West yesterday as NATO leaders gathered to hammer out a united response to the new military threat from Moscow. There was no sign of a withdrawal from Georgian soil despite a declaration from Moscow that a pullout had begun. The Georgian Government in Tbilisi countered that Russian forces were still trying to take more territory. NATO foreign ministers will meet in Brussels today to try to overcome deep-seated divisions on the best way to confront the first Russian invasion of a neighbour since the end of the Cold War. The United States, Britain and many Eastern European states are pressing for a tough stance but France, Germany and others are reluctant to alienate Moscow.

Rice Warns of New Iron Curtain - Kelly Hearn, Washington Times

Despite harsh warnings by US officials, Western nations have a slim range of options for punishing Russia for invading Georgia without damaging international institutions and their own interests, former US officials and analysts say. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that Washington and its NATO allies would not let Moscow destabilize Europe or split the Continent with a new Iron Curtain. "We have to deny Russian strategic objectives, which are clearly to undermine Georgia's democracy, to use its military capability to damage and in some cases destroy Georgian infrastructure and to try and weaken the Georgian state," she told reporters on her way to a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

War Reveals Russia's Military Might and Weakness - Associated Press

Russia's lightning war against Georgia looks like a military triumph: An armada of Russian tanks easily crushed Georgia's modest army in a show of muscle intended to punish its US-allied neighbor, scare others and reaffirm Moscow's influence on its former Soviet turf. But the conflict also revealed crucial weaknesses in Moscow's military preparedness - including faulty intelligence, a shortage of modern equipment and poor coordination. The swift Russian victory presented a stark contrast to the war in Chechnya in the 1990s, where Russian troops were bogged down for years, suffering a string of humiliating losses at the hands of lightly armed rebels.

Russia-Georgia Analysis - Christian Science Monitor

As Russia's flash war with Georgia winds down, two distinct – and contradictory – stories about what happened and why are taking shape. The Moscow press paints a one-sided picture of a beleaguered Russia forced to respond to naked aggression by a pro-Western adventurer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in order to save Russian citizens from "genocide." In the West, some depict the war as a replay of the USSR's invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan, and warning that a resurgent, oil-rich Russia is returning to Soviet-style domination of its neighbors with brute force. But close examination reveals a more complex picture - one that suggests each side also has some valid points in its defense. Correspondent Fred Weir gives an overview from his longtime perch in Moscow.

US Trainers Say Georgian Troops Weren't Ready - Associated Press

US military trainers - the only American boots on the ground - say the Georgian soldiers they knew who were sent to battle the Russians had fighting spirit but were not ready for war. The Georgians were "beginning to walk, but by no means were they running," said Army Capt. Jeff Barta, who helped train a Georgian brigade for peacekeeping service in Iraq. "If that was a US brigade it would not have gone into combat." Now on standby at the Sheraton Hotel, unarmed and in civilian clothes, six of the American trainers offered a glimpse at the 5-year-old US mission and at the performance of the outnumbered and outgunned Georgian military in its defeat by Russia.

Rice: NATO Won't Let Russia Succeed in Georgia - Associated Press

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that Russia is playing a "very dangerous game" with the US and its allies and warned that NATO would not allow Moscow to win in Georgia, destabilize Europe or draw a new Iron Curtain through the continent. But with no sign of Russia withdrawing its troops from Georgia despite a pledge to do so and indications it has moved short-range ballistic missiles into the disputed area of South Ossetia, it was unclear how the alliance would make good on Rice's vow. On her way to an emergency NATO foreign ministers meeting on the crisis, Rice said the alliance would punish Russia for its invasion of Georgia and deny its ambitions by rebuilding and fully backing Georgia and other Eastern European democracies.

Russia Trains its Missiles on Tbilisi - Agence France-Presse

Russia has deployed several tactical missile launchers and supply vehicles to South Ossetia, putting the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, within their striking range, The New York Times reported on its website yesterday. Georgia last night accused Russia of sending troops deeper into its territory, despite a pledge on Sunday to start bringing its forces out amid growing international criticism of Moscow's military action. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev vowed a "shattering" blow against any foreign power that threatened Russian citizens in his latest comment on the conflict with Georgia. Before Russian deputy chief of staff Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn claimed the withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia had began last night, The New York Times cited US officials familiar with intelligence reports as saying the launching positions were located north of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital.

Georgian Officials Deny Russian Claims of Troop Withdrawal - Voice of America

Russian military leaders said today that their troops began retreating from areas they occupied in Georgia, in keeping with a pledge made Sunday and repeated on Monday by President Dmitri Medvedev. Georgian officials said that they could see no signs of the troop withdrawal, which the two countries agreed to in a French-brokered peace agreement. It seemed earlier in the day that Russia was bolstering its position in Gori, the Georgian city that has been one of the focal points in the conflict. But a Russian army commander said that Russian forces have started to leave the city. Georgian officials, however, say Russian troops remain in key positions inside their country beyond the breakaway region of South Ossetia. General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy head of Russia's general staff, said in his now-daily news conference, that Russian troops were heading back to South Ossetia.

Eastern Europe Gets Jittery Over Russia - Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

Signing a missile-defense deal with its good friend the United States has earned Poland nothing less than the threat of nuclear attack from Russia - a threat that might not sound so empty these days, given Moscow's bloody battle with Georgia. That conflict has plunged Europe into crisis, sending waves of jitters through Poland and other eastern nations, once-occupied parts of a Soviet empire that some fear Russia may want to reconstruct. Moscow's actions have also succeeded in driving deeper the wedge between Europe's East and West.

$2 Million Humanitarian Mission in Georgia to Continue - AFPS

The US military has delivered $2 million worth of humanitarian aid to Georgia in an ongoing effort to relieve the war-torn former Soviet republic that came under Russian attack 10 days ago. In addition to 130 tons of airlifted cargo, US European Command has granted the Georgian government in Tblisi access to a $1.2 million stockpile of disaster relief and medical supplies stored in Georgia. “We are going to continue to flow in assistance,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said today. “We have been over the weekend, and we will continue this week.” More than 700 pallets sent by the US have consisted of thousands of blankets, sheets, sleeping bags, and hundreds of cots. Another 40 pallets have contained medical supplies like sutures, needles, syringes, catheters and gauze, Whitman said. But despite the steady flow of supplies, there remains a shortage of food, bedding, tents and other supplies in Georgia, where an estimated 80,000 people are displaced, according to US Agency for International Development figures.

In Battered Villages, Georgians Speak, if They Dare - C.J. Chivers, NY Times

It is a military zone sealed off by Russian military checkpoints, a land broken by roaming bands of looters that operated behind the Russian Army and made eerily empty by depopulation caused by flight. The Kremlin has allowed only official tours for journalists, accompanied by government minders, of the region, which Georgia has claimed endured organized intimidation and ethnic cleansing. The tens of thousands of refugees who staggered out to Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, took with them accounts of mass looting, of arson and, on what thus far seems a smaller scale, of killing on ethnic lines. The Ossetians, in their capital, have claimed in turn to have been subject to Georgian efforts at ethnic cleansing, and accused President Mikheil Saakashvili of war crimes. But the war on the ground, after setbacks the first day, surged in their favor with Russian help, and Ossetian civilians flowed southward into Georgia proper, as Georgians fled.

Withdrawal Syndrome - Washington Post editorial

"Europe can be proud of this success," French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote in our newspaper yesterday, referring to his negotiation of a cease-fire between Russia and Georgia. The congratulations may have been premature. Yesterday, in a by-now depressingly familiar pattern, Russian officials, up to and including the president, announced the withdrawal of forces from Georgia, while in Georgia itself there was no sign of withdrawal. On the contrary, Russian forces continued to dig in and loot as they occupied a large swath of Georgian territory. They remained in control of the central city of Gori and the western city of Senaki. They moved tanks into Igoeti, 22 miles from the capital of Tbilisi. They have wrecked the rails on a bridge of the main east-west railroad and taken control of the main east-west highway, essentially cutting off most trade and transport in Georgia. They have seized the Inguri power plant, which provides 78 percent of Georgia's electricity. Meanwhile, as disturbing reports of rapes and murders of civilians continue to seep out of Russian-controlled South Ossetia, the Russians blocked a visit to the region by the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Moscow's Challenge - The Australian editorial

The dust has yet to settle in the Caucasus, but the smoke screen of propaganda is beginning to lift. Though Russian military might has prevailed over Georgia's army, Moscow has lost political and moral ground. While much has been said about how Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili miscalculated by sending troops into South Ossetia, Russia must draw its own lessons from this conflict. For all its self-righteousness, the only country to openly support its invasion has been Cuba. So blatant has been Moscow's violation of international norms of behaviour that even loyal allies such as Belarus and Venezuela have kept their mouths shut. It may be impossible for Georgia to reclaim South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but Russia's aim of regime change has backfired. Georgians have rallied to Mr Saakashvili's side, and his enthusiasm for joining NATO is undiminished. Moscow's justification for the war - that it moved in to protect its nationals after Georgian forces had committed acts of "genocide" and reduced most of South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali, to rubble - does not bear up to scrutiny.

Putin Overplays a Strong Hand - National Review editorial

In the middle of last week the Georgia crisis seemed destined to end in a clear victory for Russia. It had subdued its fractious, independent neighbor. All but one of the energy pipelines between Central Asia and Western Europe were under its direct control - and the single exception was but a few hours away by tank. A stern lesson had been sent to former Soviet possessions, inside and outside the Commonwealth of Independent States, that they live in Russia’s zone of influence and must conform to Russian foreign policy. The European Union had forsworn any criticism of Moscow’s open aggression to protect its own status as a “mediator.” The US had failed to offer any real succor to Georgia. Thousands of “peace” demonstrators unaccountably had failed to appear in the streets to protest Russian aggression. And the world was moving on. Then Russia overplayed a very strong hand.

Russia Is Still a Hungry Empire - Matthew Kaminski, WSJ opinion

The sight of Russian tanks rolling through Georgia was shocking yet familiar. Images flash back of Chechnya in 1994 and '99, Vilnius '91, Afghanistan '79, Prague '68, Hungary '56. Before that the Soviet invasions, courtesy of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, of Poland and the Baltics in '39 and '40. Kazaks, Azeris, Tajiks, Ukrainians remember - from family stories and national lore - their own subjugation to Russian rule. Other empires such as Britain and France adjusted, not without difficulty, to the fall of their distant domains. Far more of Russia's essence is tied up in the Imperium, and it barely tried to find a new identity after the Soviet Union fell. The war in Georgia marks an easy return to territorial expansion (here Moscow has taken chunks of Georgia for itself) and attempted regional dominance.

Is Ossetia Essential? - Richard Cohen, Washington Post opinion

Now I, too, would like to become a realist -- if just for a day. I'd like to ask who among us is willing to fight to bring South Ossetia back into the Georgian fold? How about Abkhazia? These are the ethnic enclaves that Georgia claims and Russia -- not to put too fine a point on it -- supports. They are the immediate reasons for the recent war. I ask my nasty little questions because it has been the policy of the current Bush administration to have Georgia as well as Ukraine admitted to NATO. This would mean that if either country got into a dust-up with its neighbor Russia, we would scramble the jets, stoke up the usual talk radio personalities and sally into yet another lovely war. Before this happens, can we at least debate whether this is a good idea? Cynic that I am, I have my doubts.

Russia's Flashback To 1968 - Anne Applebaum, Washington Post opinion

True, Russia is no longer Soviet. But its ruling clique, led by former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, remains steeped in the paranoid, highly controlled, conspiracy-obsessed culture of the old KGB. Putin and his entourage are not communists, but neither do they believe in free markets or free societies. Instead, all important decisions must be made in Moscow, by a small, unelected group of people who know how to resist sabotage organized from abroad. Events cannot be allowed to just happen; they must be controlled and manipulated. Elections cannot just take place; their outcomes must be determined in advance. The Russian state's open hostility toward not only Georgia but also Ukraine and the Baltic states is, in this sense, partly ideological. Genuine elections have taken place in those countries; people who have not been preselected by a ruling oligarchy do sometimes gain wealth or power. Georgia's Rose Revolution and Ukraine's Orange Revolution even involved street demonstrations that helped unseat more oligarchic regimes. Thus it is not pure nationalism, or mere traditional great-power arrogance, that makes the Russian leadership disdainful of Georgia and Ukraine: It is also, at some level, fear that similar voter revolutions could someday challenge Russia's leaders, too.

No Benefit from Russian Aggression - David Miliband, The Times opinion

You don't need to be a student of the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 to find the sight of Russian tanks rolling into a neighbouring country chilling. The Georgian crisis is about more than vital issues of humanitarian need and rule of law over rule of force. It raises a fundamental issue of whether, and if so how, Russia can play a full and legitimate part in a rules-based international political system, exercising its rights but respecting those of others. The immediate issues are clear. The ceasefire must be fully implemented. We need to see evidence that Moscow has now ordered Russian forces to withdraw to pre-August 7 positions and that this is happening. Russian mind games on withdrawal do them no credit. The quick deployment of international monitors is also vital (the UK will play its full part in this). Humanitarian aid needs to be delivered quickly - again the UK is already committed in this area.

Caucasus Burning - Thomas De Wall, Wall Street Journal opinion

So much has been left in ruins in the Caucasus in the past week. What chance is there of a salvage operation? The landscape is littered with wreckage. First South Ossetia was ravaged; now Georgia is experiencing a great tragedy. Amid the wider carnage, the greatest losers are the 25,000 or so ethnic Georgians of South Ossetia. Only a month ago Ossetians and Georgians were buying and selling from one another in South Ossetia by day even as armed men in their villages exchanged fire at night. Now those Georgians face total dispossession, their homes burned by South Ossetian irregular fighters. Around 50,000 Georgians in Abkhazia are still in their homes, but they face a precarious future. These people have the greatest moral right to pass judgment on a long list of culprits. Russia's guilt is of course the most blatant. The Russian army has unleashed atavistic violence and allowed Ossetians and North Caucasians to follow in its wake, reinflaming interethnic hatreds that had begun to fade after the wars of the 1990s.

Top Russian General: Israel Armed, Trained Georgia Forces

Russia Smashes Georgian Army, Sends NATO Message

Russia's Rushed, Ramshackle March to South Ossetia

Georgia, Russia Exchange War Prisoners

UN Appeals for Emergency Aid for Victims of Georgian War

Russia Accuses Georgia of Plotting 'Acts of Terror'

Russia Accuses Georgia of Violating Ceasefire

Air of Revenge Hangs Over Georgia Conflict Zone

Hackers Strike Apart From Russian Military

Georgian Ambassador Looks to Change Arab Perspectives on Russia

Russia-Georgia Conflict: Why Both Sides Have Valid Points

In West Georgia, Few Signs of Damage by Russia Gori: Russian Military Unit Leaves Georgian Town

Highway Blocked by Russians Key for Georgia Economy

Russian Forces Detain Georgian Soldiers at Port

'The Georgians Were No Challenge at All, It's Time to Go Home'

Most Russians Support Invasion of Georgia

US Military: Aid Flows to Georgia, Food Need Grows

Georgia Cuts Access to Russian Websites, TV News

Georgian Authorities Block Russian Aid for Gori

The Toll of the War in Georgia's North

Survivors Tell of Ethnic Killing in Wake of Fighting in Georgia

Russia: US, UK Hinder UN Resolution on South Ossetia

Aid Agencies Press Russia for Access to South Ossetia

Georgian Official: 'This Is Another Srebrenica'

NATO Divided Over US Call to Curb Russian Ties

NATO Mulls Closer Ties With Georgia

NATO Ministers Warn Russia, No 'Business as Usual'

Russia Dismisses NATO's 'Empty Words' as It Stands Firm in Georgia

NATO Grapples With the Angry Bear

France's Kouchner Voices Doubt on Russian Pullout From Georgia

Belarus Praises Russia Over Georgia Operation

Canada Denies Russian Report on Black Sea Warship

UN Council Discusses New Georgia Resolution

Text: Draft UN Security Council Resolution on Georgia

Rice Warns of New Iron Curtain

NATO Urges Russia To Withdraw - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

NATO allies said Tuesday there would be no "business as usual" with Moscow until Russian troops withdraw from all parts of Georgia, but members of the Western alliance disagreed on the extent to which Moscow should be more permanently isolated. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, meanwhile, pledged to withdraw an unspecified number of Russian troops from Georgia by Friday and accepted the presence of European observers. In a telephone conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Medvedev said that "part of the Russian peacekeeping contingent will withdraw" to a temporary buffer zone around Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia by Friday "after completing construction of checkpoints and cantonments," according to a statement issued by the Kremlin.

NATO Ministers Warn No ‘Business as Usual’ - Helene Cooper, New York Times

NATO foreign ministers strengthened their ties to Georgia and called for Russia to observe a ceasefire and to immediately withdraw its troops, vowing that until it does the alliance “won’t continue with business as usual” in its relations with Moscow. But the NATO ministers, at a rare, emergency meeting, failed to agree on any specific punitive measures, despite pressure from the United States to at least threaten Russia with unspecified “consequences” and pleas from the Czech Republic, Poland and NATO’s Baltic members to take a tough stand. Instead, NATO issued a tepid response, promising to establish a “NATO-Georgia council” to strengthen ties; a far cry from Georgia’s goal of full NATO membership. And it ignored pleas from nervous Eastern European members for a strong, “don’t-even-think-about-it” warning against a military intervention there. All of which raised a critical question: What, exactly, is membership in the historic 60-year old alliance worth today?

Russia Dismisses NATO's 'Empty Words' on Georgia - Michael Evans, The Times

NATO united in the face of Russia’s failure to withdraw from Georgia yesterday, freezing regular contacts with Moscow and declaring that there could be “no business as usual under present circumstances”. However, there will be no NATO troops rushing to Tbilisi to put military muscle behind the tough statement, which was issued at an emergency meeting of the 26 foreign ministers of the alliance in Brussels. Military assistance will be restricted to training exercises and talks about prospective membership of the alliance. When David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, met President Saakashvili of Georgia in Tbilisi, he emphasised that he was talking politically when he said that “NATO will defend the territorial integrity of Georgia”. He said that he was referring to the defence of international law.

NATO Divided on Dealing with Russia - Adrian Blomfield, Daily Telegraph

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.

Russians Begin to Withdraw Tanks - The Australian

A small column of Russian tanks and armoured vehicles last night left the strategic Georgian city of Gori, in the first sign of a Russian pullback of troops from the pro-Western former Soviet republic. The pullback to Russian territory through the breakaway province of South Ossetia followed the exchange yesterday of prisoners between Georgia and Russia. Fifteen Georgians were exchanged for five Russians at a checkpoint 30km from Tbilisi. The Georgians, two of them wounded, had earlier emerged from Russian helicopters that landed near the site. In the key Black Sea port of Poti, Russian soldiers held about 20 blindfolded Georgian servicemen at gunpoint on top of military vehicles and commandeered US Humvees. The four American Humvees had been at the port awaiting shipment back to the US after earlier US-Georgian military exercises. The Russian column outside Gori, which also apparently included a mobile rocket-launcher, passed the village of Ruisi on the road to South Ossetia.

Pentagon Sees No Significant Russian Movement - Al Pessin, VOA

Officials at the Pentagon have seen no indication that Russian forces are making any significant moves to withdraw from Georgia, as Russia's leaders promised when they signed a cease-fire agreement on Saturday. The White House says it should not take Russia any longer to withdraw its troops than it took to send them in. Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman says Defense Department experts "don't see much change" in the deployment of Russian forces in Georgia. "The Russian forces that were not there prior to August 6, that were part of the peacekeeping mission, the agreement calls for them to be withdrawn out of Georgia. So far, we have not seen any significant movement," said Whitman. Whitman says NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels made clear that European countries will re-evaluate their ties with Russia as a result of its invasion of Georgia. US officials have said the consequences Russia will face will depend partly on whether it abides by the cease-fire agreement and withdraws its forces.

Russian Troops Slow to Leave Georgia - Paul Rimple, Christian Science Monitor

Two days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that his country's troops would begin withdrawing from Georgia, there's little evidence of a pullout, with Georgians in occupied territory struggling to stay safe and get food. A few hundred meters north of Georgia's ransacked Army base in the central Georgian city of Gori, Russian troops on Monday were digging trenches to fortify an artillery battery. The troops also have detained Georgian policemen and continue to block the only highway linking west to east Georgia. And Russia's presence in Georgia is not limited to its military. Russian broadcasts have replaced Georgian TV in Russian-occupied cities such as Gori.

Russia Sends Mixed Signs - Schwirtz and Barry, New York Times

Russia showed small signs of moving a few troops away from Georgia on Tuesday. But Russia retained its grip on the country, and Russian forces bound and blindfolded 21 Georgian soldiers at the Black Sea port of Poti, parading them with five seized Humvees belonging to Georgia’s backers - the United States. Two days after President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia promised that the pullout would begin, there were signs of movement, however minor. A platoon of armored infantry moved away from Georgia through the narrow mountain passes on the Russian side of the border. Near the central city of Gori, Russia and Georgia exchanged prisoners, including two Russian pilots who had been shot down by Georgian forces.

Russia Moves Toward Pullback But Shows Strength - Associated Press

Russia took the first steps toward a troop pullback from Georgia on Tuesday but at the same time paraded blindfolded and bound Georgian prisoners on armored vehicles and seized four US Humvees. The mixed signals came as NATO allies met in emergency session in Belgium and demanded Russia fulfill its promise to withdraw its forces from the small former Soviet republic. A small Russian column including three tanks, three trucks, five armored personnel carriers and a rocket-launcher left Gori, the central city that straddles a vital east-west highway. A Russian officer said they were headed for South Ossetia, the disputed province at the heart of the conflict, then home to Russia.

NATO: Cooperation with Russia Tied to Troops Vow - Associated Press

NATO allies warned Russia on Tuesday that the alliance's cooperation with Moscow will depend on the pullout of troops from Georgia. They insisted the tiny Caucasus nation remains on track to join NATO despite Moscow's opposition. "There can be no business as usual under present circumstances," said NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. "The future of our relations will depend on the concrete actions Russia will take to honor the words of President (Dimitry) Medvedev to abide by the six-point peace plan, which is not happening at the moment."

Russia Hits Back at NATO Warning - BBC News

Russia has dismissed a warning by Nato that normal relations are impossible while its troops remain inside Georgia. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Nato of bias and of trying to save the "criminal regime" in Tbilisi. He insisted Moscow was not occupying Georgia and had no plans to annex the separatist region of South Ossetia. Earlier, Nato demanded that Russia pull out its troops from Georgia as agreed in an EU-brokered ceasefire plan signed by both parties at the weekend. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev told his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy in a phone call that the pull-out would be complete by 21-22 August, with the exception of some 500 troops, who will be installed in peacekeeping posts on either side of South Ossetia's border.

Russian Intentions Unclear - Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post

Russian troops returned to the Georgian port city of Poti on Tuesday, taking 20 Georgian soldiers prisoner, towing away several American Humvees and blowing up a missile ship, reporters and Georgian officials said. A column of Russian armored vehicles was seen leaving the area of Gori in the direction of South Ossetia, the pro-Russian separatist zone, a day after Russian officials said that a general withdrawal had begun. Reporters in Gori said the departure made no discernible difference in the Russian presence in the town and that Russian troops remained camped in fields north of it. In a rare sign of cooperation, the two sides exchanged prisoners: 15 Georgians for five Russians. The Georgians, appearing on local television, said they had been tortured; several had broken arms or fingers. They said at least two Georgian soldiers were still being held in South Ossetia.

Toll of the War in Georgia's North - Jonathan Finer, Washington Post

This region near Georgia's northern border has suffered greatly from the conflict ignited 11 days ago, when Georgian troops moved into the disputed territory of South Ossetia and Russian forces then pushed them back. But a trip here by reporters, who were accompanying the first humanitarian aid convoy to reach outlying areas, also undermined some of the most incendiary allegations advanced by Georgian officials. Mereti, site of the alleged abductions, is the same village where government officials had recently said three local women were raped and murdered. At least eight residents said Tuesday that no such attacks had occurred. Georgians living in several of the villages said the Russians occupying their land had treated them well, done nothing to encourage them to leave and offered the only protection available from the South Ossetian militias they feared most.

Survivors in Georgia Tell of Ethnic Killings - Sabrina Tavernese, New York Times

Ethnic cleansing has haunted the borderlands of the old Soviet bloc. It is a weapon that was wielded with devastating force in Bosnia and Kosovo. But a dozen interviews with those who fled the fighting, and a trip through seven Georgian villages just south of the fighting, indicated the killing this month was not that systematic, nor on that scale - based on what is known so far. Georgia’s military campaign ripped through a city just north of here last week, prompting Russia to strike back and opening a way for South Ossetians to sweep into Georgian villages for revenge. Still, the victims seemed marked by their ethnicity in a vicious, if short, war — itself fought over competing claims to the same patches of ground by different groups. Villages had been burned and houses broken; unburied bodies lay rotting; fresh graves were dug in gardens and basements. Much remains unknown.

Russian Soldiers Take Prisoners in Georgia Port - Associated Press

Russian soldiers took about 20 Georgian troops prisoner at a key Black Sea port in western Georgia on Tuesday, blindfolding them and holding them at gunpoint, and commandeered American Humvees awaiting shipment back to the United States. The move came as a small column of Russian tanks and armored vehicles left the strategic Georgian city of Gori in the first sign of a Russian pullback of troops from Georgia after a cease-fire intended to end fighting that reignited Cold War tensions. The two countries on Tuesday also exchanged prisoners captured during their brief war.

Russia Warns Ukraine Not to Interfere at Navy Base - Associated Press

Russia's foreign minister warned Ukrainian leaders Tuesday against trying to restrict the Kremlin's use of a Crimean naval base it leases from Ukraine, adding to tensions that have heated up since Russian troops invaded Georgia. Ukraine's pro-Western president, Victor Yushchenko, has sided with Georgia and moved last week to restrict Russian warships at the leased military base at the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, saying the vessels' movements were subject to Ukrainian approval. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed that argument in a sharply worded barb Tuesday, saying Russia's ships don't need any permission to use the port.

NATO's 'Empty Words' - Wall Street Journal editorial

"Empty words." That's how Moscow glibly dismissed NATO's criticism yesterday of Russia's continued occupation of Georgia. The Russians may be bullies, but like all bullies they know weakness when they see it. The most NATO ministers could muster at their meeting in Brussels was a statement that they "cannot continue with business as usual" with Russia. There was no move to fast-track Georgia's bid to join NATO, nor a pledge to help the battered democracy rebuild its defenses. Asked about NATO reconstruction aid, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer pointedly said, twice, that it would go for "civilian infrastructure." So here we have a military alliance going out of its way to stress that it will not be providing any military aid. The alliance didn't even cancel any cooperative programs with Russia, though Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said "one can presume" that "this issue will have to be taken into view." That must have the Kremlin shaking.

Georgia: The Reckoning - The Times editorial

As NATO confronts defiance in the Caucasus and casualties in Afghanistan, it must find the confidence to match its words with actions. “Force cannot be the basis for the demarcation of new lines around Russia.” The German Foreign Minister offered this precise summary of the challenge facing NATO in Georgia as he arrived for yesterday's emergency summit in Brussels. Almost simultaneously, seven Russian armoured vehicles drove west out of Gori. A withdrawal of sorts had begun. It offered some consolation on a bleak day for NATO commanders, informed yesterday morning of the deaths of ten French troops in a clash with Taleban forces in Afghanistan. President Sarkozy promptly vowed to fly there, and affirmed that “the cause is just”. The same can be said of NATO's task of containing Russia in the Caucasus. For all the alliance's hesitancy in recent days, this task is also achiev-able: the crisis there may have left relations between Russia and the West chillier than at any point since the Cold War, but, as yesterday's troop movements showed, Western diplomacy and Russian manoeuvring have seldom been so tightly linked.

NATO Must Not Shrink From its Biggest Challenge - Daily Telegraph editorial

The response of NATO's foreign ministers to Russia's illegal incursion into Georgia may have been rhetorically colourful but in practical terms it amounted to little. While David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said that Russia had "violated international law as well as the rules of the international game", the alliance stopped short of taking any serious punitive action against Moscow. Despite the urging of the United States, NATO decided not even to suspend its biannual ministerial meetings with Russia on the grounds that it would be counterproductive to sever channels of communication with Moscow. Such a tepid response to Russia's bullying hardly augurs well for the ambitions of both Georgia and Ukraine to join the alliance. But even as yesterday's emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Council was getting under way in Brussels, news was breaking that underscored another - and in many ways more direct - challenge to the credibility of the alliance. The death of 10 French soldiers and the wounding of 21 more in an ambush just 30 miles from Kabul is a bloody reminder that the Taliban - far from being on the run, as allied commanders proclaimed earlier this summer - are resurgent. They are proving particularly lethal in the area close to the capital, as Monday's attack on the French shows.

America Must Choose - Sergey Lavrov, Wall Street Journal opinion

In some Western nations an utterly one-sided picture has been painted of the recent crisis in the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict. The statements of American officials would lead one to conclude that the crisis began when Russia sent in its troops to support its peacekeepers there. Meticulously avoided in those statements: The decision of Tbilisi to use crude military force against South Ossetia in the early hours of Aug. 8. The Georgian army used multiple rocket launchers, artillery and air force to attack the sleeping city of Tskhinvali. Some honest independent observers acknowledge that a surprised Russia didn't respond immediately. We started moving our troops in support of peacekeepers only on the second day of Georgia's ruthless military assault. Yes, our military struck sites outside of South Ossetia. When the positions of your peacekeepers and the civilian population they have been mandated to protect are shelled, the sources of such attacks are legitimate targets.

Russia Never Wanted a War - Mikhail Gorbachev, New York Times opinion

The acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves? Russia did not want this crisis. The Russian leadership is in a strong enough position domestically; it did not need a little victorious war. Russia was dragged into the fray by the recklessness of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He would not have dared to attack without outside support. Once he did, Russia could not afford inaction.

What Did We Expect? - Thomas Friedman, New York Times opinion

If the conflict in Georgia were an Olympic event, the gold medal for brutish stupidity would go to the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The silver medal for bone-headed recklessness would go to Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the bronze medal for rank short-sightedness would go to the Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams. Let’s start with us. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was among the group - led by George Kennan, the father of “containment” theory, Senator Sam Nunn and the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum - that argued against expanding NATO, at that time.

Schooling the Bully - Michael Gerson, Washington Post opinion

The nation of Georgia is a place of inspiration and danger. I saw both in a single hour. I was in Tbilisi's Freedom Square during President Bush's visit in May 2005, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried. During the Georgian national anthem, the speaker system broke down and tens of thousands of Georgians movingly sang that song without music -- a song that had been illegal to sing under Soviet occupation. It is shocking to imagine those joyful people now bombed, fearful and occupied. At the same event, an assassination attempt was made against President Bush. A man threw a grenade wrapped in a handkerchief. Bush was behind a bulletproof shield but within the blast radius of the weapon. The grenade was live but did not explode -- or maybe the explosion in Georgia was just delayed.

NATO Confronts the Bear - Yonah Alexander, Washington Times opinion

The Russian-Georgian crisis, the latest tug-of-war for regional dominance, and the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan have once again underscored NATO's old-new challenge in the 21st century. After all, NATO was initially created to confront the "Russian Bear" as a strategic alliance that guaranteed its members military support in the case of aggression by a third country. Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the traditional NATO mission is now more relevant than ever. The Russian armed attack against Georgia, a candidate for joining the 26-nation Atlantic alliance, also opened a serious rift between the Alliance and Moscow, threatening security concerns in Europe and beyond.

Polish Government Approves Missile Deal - Associated Press

Poland's government gave formal approval to a missile defense deal with the US on Tuesday before a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the deputy prime minister said. Grzegorz Schetyna said Prime Minister Donald Tusk's Cabinet signed off on the deal for Poland to host 10 missile interceptors at its regular weekly meeting. It was the first of several steps required after negotiators last week reached an agreement following about 1 1/2 years of talks. The deal still needs parliamentary and presidential approval.

Karadzic Wants UN Judge Replaced - BBC News

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has asked the UN war crimes tribunal to replace the judge in charge of the preparatory stage of his trial. In a letter to The Hague tribunal, he said presiding judge Alphons Orie had a "personal" interest in convicting him. Mr Karadzic said the Dutch judge would convict him to reinforce rulings in his earlier cases against Bosnian Serbs. Mr Karadzic is indicted on 11 counts of war crimes in connection with the 1990s Bosnian war, including genocide.