For a different perspective check out these two articles at atimes.com
“Russia bids to rid Georgia of its folly
By John Helmer
MOSCOW – One word explains why the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union have obliged themselves to sit on their hands, while Russia’s defends its citizens, and national interests, in the Caucasus, and liberates Georgians from the folly of their unpopular president, Mikheil Saakashvili. That word is Kosovo.
Russia sent troops into the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia to take on Georgian troops that had advanced into the territory. Four days of heavy fighting have seen thousands of casualties and the Georgian forces withdrawing. Russian troops were reported on Monday to be continuing fighting in parts of Georgia, including around the capital Tbilisi.
Eight hundred years of Caucasian history explain why Saakashvili has brought such destruction and ignominy on his countrymen over the past few days.
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For all Russians, not only those with relatives in Ossetia, the near-total destruction by Georgian guns of Tskhinvali is a war crime. The deaths of about 2,000 civilians in the Georgian attack, and the forced flight of about 35,000 survivors from the town – the last census of Tskhinvali’s population reported 30,000 – has been described by Russian leaders, and is understood by Russian public opinion, as a form of genocide. Ninety percent of the town’s population are Russian citizens.
To Russians, the Georgian attack of August 8 looks like the very same “ethnic cleansing”, which the US and European powers have treated as a crime against humanity, when committed on the former territory of federal Yugoslavia.
But Russians view the international war that broke up Yugoslavia as a practice run for breaking up the Russian Caucasus, first by arming the Chechen secessionist Dzhokar Dudayev; then by financing anti-Russian terrorism in the Russian provinces of Chechnya and Ingushetia; and now by the Georgian military thrust against South Ossetia.
Since the US and the European Union have so recently compelled Serbia to accept the Albanian takeover of Serbia’s Kosovo province, the overwhelming Russian view is that this will not be allowed to happen again. “Ossetia is not Kosovo” is a widespread refrain in Moscow today.
“If [former Yugoslav president] Slobodan Milosevic should be put on trial, the opinion here is – so too should Saakashvili,” says a leading Moscow analyst. ”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH12Ag02.html
“Saakashvili overplays his hand
By Brian Whitmore
In an effort to prod the West to Tbilisi’s side in its rapidly escalating armed conflict with Russia, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is invoking the ghosts of Cold War battles past – Moscow’s suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in 1979.
The Georgian leader’s strategy is clear. Tbilisi’s small army is no match for the Russian military machine. Saakashvili’s only chance of success in his bid to regain control of the Moscow-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia, therefore, is to globalize the conflict and turn it into a central front of a new struggle between Moscow and the West.
“What Russia has been doing against Georgia for the last two days represents an open aggression, unprecedented in modern times,” Saakashvili said in a televised address on August 8. “It is a direct challenge for the whole world. If Russia is not stopped today by the whole world, tomorrow Russian tanks might reach any European capital. I think everyone has understood this by now.”
So far, the West has not taken the bait.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH12Ag01.html
