From Russia Today:
Russia is calling it a “genocide.” The South Ossetian envoy to Russia is alledging that Georgia used mercenaries, possibly Americans. Welcome to Russian propaganda.
From the Associated Press:
It may come to be known as the Four Day War but Georgia’s miscalculation in trying to seize back South Ossetia looks likely to end. At the start of this war, Georgia had nine jet fighters, while Russia over 1,700. Georgia possessed 128 tanks – compared with Russia’s 23,000. A fight of equals it was not. Russia blockaded the Georgian coast and punished the Georgian city of Gori which Russian jets pounded into rubble. Even with the Georgian army in retreat, there are still fears of a wider war. The movement of Russia’s naval fleet from their base in Ukraine to positions near Georgia also threatened to destabilise the region. Ukraine’s foreign ministry threatened to prevent the warships from returning to their base in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. ANd Russia has been accused of opening up a second front in the other breakaway of Abkhazia in western Georgia.
And in case there’s any doubt as to who runs Russia, it was Prime Minister Putin, not President Medvedev, who went to the front.
News Reports
From the UK Guardian:
Georgia today said it had withdrawn its forces from the breakaway province of South Ossetia as it accused Russia of escalating the conflict by imposing a naval blockade and of preparing to attack Georgian troops in Abkhazia province.
The New York Times reports that Russia is tightening its grip on Georgia:
Russian troops that had poured into the disputed territory of South Ossetia moved up to the border with Georgia on Sunday, as the conflict appeared to be developing into the worst clashes between Russia and a foreign military since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Overnight, Russia landed ground troops off of warships into the disputed territory of Abkhazia and broadened its bombing campaign to the Georgian capital’s airport.
The Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe said Georgia was ready to negotiate a ceasefire, but a top Russian defense official said no formal offer had been received.
Georgian authorities said Sunday morning that they expect Russian attacks to come on three fronts — from Gali and Zugdidi, two spots on the Abkhazian border, and from Ossetia, according to Gigi Ugulada, the mayor of Tbilisi. They also expect more bombing on the Kodori Gorge, the only part of Abkhazia that remains under Georgian control.
The Baltic Times looks at how the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are handling the crisis. These three states were invaded by the Soviet Union in 1940 and the West did nothing.
Der Spiegel writes
The world is looking to the Caucasus region with dismay. President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia has sent his country’s forces into the breakaway region of South Ossetia, and its protector, Russia, has retaliated by sending in tanks and aircraft. Is a region that is home to all of 75,000 people about to become the scene of a hot war?
News Analysis
The New York Times finds that despite the fact that Georgia is a strong US ally, the US needs Russia more. In effect, Georgia is on its own.
I highlighted this piece by James Traub yesterday also of the New York Times but it is an excellent piece. It is entitledTaunting the Bear:
It’s scarcely clear yet how things will stand between the two when the smoke clears. But it’s safe to say that while Russia has a massive advantage in firepower, Georgia, an open, free-market, more-or-less-democratic nation that sees itself as a distant outpost of Europe, enjoys a decisive rhetorical and political edge. In recent conversations there, President Saakashvili compared Georgia to Czechoslovakia in 1938, trusting the West to save it from a ravenous neighbor. “If Georgia fails,” he said to me darkly two months ago, “it will send a message to everyone that this path doesn’t work.”
During a 10-day visit to Georgia in June, I heard the 1938 analogy again and again, as well as another to 1921, when Bolshevik troops crushed Georgia’s thrilling, and brief, first experiment with liberal rule.
Georgians are a melodramatic people, and few more so than their hyperactive president; but they have good reason to fear the ambitions, and the wrath, of a rejuvenated Russia seeking to regain lost power. Indeed, a renascent and increasingly bellicose Russia is an ominous spectacle for the West too. While China preaches, and largely practices, the doctrine of “peaceful rise,” avoiding confrontation abroad in order to focus on development at home, Russia acts increasingly like an expansionist 19th-century power, pressing at its borders. Most strikingly, Russia has bluntly deployed its vast oil and gas resources to punish refractory neighbors like Ukraine, and reward compliant ones like Armenia.
European Blogs
From Fistful of Euros an article by Douglas Muir that asks if Georgia was lured into a trap:
Well, the South Ossetia conflict is going pretty badly for Georgia. The Russians appear to have cleared Tsikhinvali, and they’ve moved over six! hundred! armored vehicles into theater. Russian bombers have struck at a number of military targets inside Georgia, and the Russian Navy is maneuvering off the Georgian coast.
It’s increasingly clear that the Russians were very ready for this conflict. In fact it’s looking like the Georgians did exactly what Moscow wanted.
Was Georgia played?
More from Fistful of Euros, one of my favourite Euro blogs, in a post by David Weman based on reporting from Tbilisi that US failed to inform the Georgians of the build up and perhaps even encouraged President Saakashvili’s confrontational approach with Russia:
The Americans have more or less encouraged Saakashvili’s dangerously confrontational approach to Russia, and have given them hopes of NATO membership, which was never going to happen. They may also have had unrealistic expectations about US support in the event of a war.
Robert Amsterdam however finds that Russia’s position on Georgia is self-defeating. Sure Russia has lost in the court of world public opinion, but does it matter? Authoritarian regimes such as Putin’s are not out to win a popularity contest. Russia has sent a stern message to the West.
Wannabe NATO member on the Warpath by Jerome a Paris of the European Tribune.
McCain’s Wrong on Russia and So Is Obama by Paul Saunders and Brooke Leonard of Russia Blog.
In case you missed it, here’s my assessment of the US response and the views of the Presidential candidates: Do Not Feed the Bears, Do Not Taunt the Bears.