Russia agreed to the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. All 15 Soviet Republics became independent states, and for the past 18 years Russia has not taken any military action to threaten the independent sovereignty of any of those states.

There have been a few places along the border, where there have been ethnic conflicts that began long before the Soviet Union broke up (or even long before the Russian Empire broke up) and have continued to the present day. These are places where the borders do not correctly correspond ethnic distributions. In some of these cases, the dissatisfied population on the “wrong” side of the border is mostly Russians, but in other cases (e.g. South Ossetia) the problems involve primarily non-Russian groups.

Just as we do not want foreigners blaming the USA for all the problems in the world and just as we expect due credit for our own good intentions, the Russians do not want to be blamed for all the problems they must deal with and do expect credit for their good intentions.

Whenever the USA intervenes somewhere, the international howl goes up that we have purposely manipulated local grievances so that we can take over some area or some rich resource. For example, in Iraq we supposedly have provoked all the conflicts between the Shiites, Sunnis and Arabs and Kurds so that we can take over the whole country of Iraq and its petroleum wealth. And now furthermore we are going to take over Iran too!

Russia has no intention to take over Georgia. All the current events can be explained satisfactorily without having to resort to any paranoid belief in any such evil intention.