Russian troops raid Georgian town; scores dead

NF Reporter · 08-09-2008, 09:55 AM

AP - Russia sent hundreds of tanks and troops into the separatist province of South Ossetia and bombed Georgian towns Saturday in a major escalation of the conflict that has left scores of civilians dead and wounded.

Full Story...

waltky · 08-09-2008, 04:47 PM

Russians slaughterin' the Georgians...

Georgia: More Air Attacks by Russia
Friday, Aug. 08, 2008 — Intense fighting reportedly raged for a second night in the Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia on Saturday and Georgia's interior ministry reported air attacks on three military bases and key facilities for shipping oil to the West.

Quote:

Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the Vaziani military base on the outskirts of the Georgian capital was bombed by warplanes during the night and that bombs fell in the area of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. He also said two other Georgian military bases were hit and that warplanes bombed the Black Sea port city of Poti, which has a sizable oil shipment facility.

Utiashvili said there apparently were significant casualties and damage in the attacks, but that further details would not be known until the morning. Russia dispatched an armored column into South Ossetia on Friday after Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, launched a surprise offensive to crush separatists. Witnesses said hundreds of civilians were killed.

The fighting, which devastated the capital of Tskhinvali, threatened to ignite a wider war between Georgia and Russia, and escalate tensions between Moscow and Washington. Georgia said it was forced to launch the assault because of rebel attacks; the separatists alleged Georgia violated a cease-fire. "I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars," said Lyudmila Ostayeva, 50, who had fled with her family to Dzhava, a village near the border with Russia. "It's impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged."

MORE

waltky · 08-10-2008, 03:31 PM

Has Georgia overstepped its bounds?...

Has Georgia Overreached in Ossetia?
Saturday, Aug. 09, 2008 - The victims, of course, are the civilians of Georgia and its breakaway South Ossetia region, caught in the escalating battle between the Georgian military and South Ossetian separatists and their more powerful Russian backer.

Quote:

Hundreds are alleged to have been killed in two days of heavy fighting that has shown no sign of abating by late Saturday, and thousands more are confronting the resulting humanitarian crisis. But the battle that began to rage in Georgia as world leaders were treated to the pyrotechnics of the Beijing Olympics' opening ceremony may be the most serious challenge to the post-Cold War balance of power since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Georgia and South Ossetia have been squared off in an uneasy peace for more than a decade, now, since the region broke away from Georgia in the early '90s, following its independence from the Soviet Union. After a protracted war that killed around 1,000 people and displaced thousands more ethnic Georgians from the territory, Georgia was compelled to sign a cease-fire agreement that left South Ossetia — a tiny mountainous territory a few football fields smaller than Rhode Island — effectively autonomous, but unable to secure recognition by the international community. Still, Russia has protected the region, providing finance, military protection and even passports, and has used South Ossetia's secession, together with that of Abkhazia, another breakaway region of Georgia, as leverage against Tblisi's desire to join NATO. Moscow sees Georgia's move towards NATO as part of a strategy of hostile encirclement of Russia by Western powers, and when the Western alliance enabled Kosovo's secession from Serbia earlier this year despite the fact that its independence is not recognized by the United Nations, many analysts expected Russia to retaliate by further stoking the fires of secession in Georgia.

Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili has a different agenda — he won election in 2004 on promise to recover the breakaway territories, and to join NATO. So closely has he courted the U.S. that Georgia today has 2,000 troops in Iraq, the third-largest contingent after the U.S. and Britain, although Tbilisi has now indicated it will have to bring at least half of them home to deal with the security crisis in South Ossetia. But the Georgian leader's latest actions will be read by some as designed to force the hand of NATO members reluctant to press the issue of handing membership to Georgia for fear of provoking a Russian backlash. So, after a couple of days of skirmishing along the unofficial border between his forces and those of the separatists, the Georgian leader launched a full-blown invasion whose aim, his government said, was to "restore constitutional order," that is, control by the central government, in South Ossetia. Plainly, the offensive was a gamble, because Saakashvili should have had little doubt about Moscow's readiness to defend the separatists. Moreover, NATO officials had repeatedly warned the Georgian government against launching any attempt to resolve the dispute through military means. Still, he pressed forward.

More Has Georgia Overreached in Ossetia? - TIME

See also:

Russia Ready to Negotiate
Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008 — Russia declared itself ready to make peace with Georgia and U.N. officials confirmed Sunday that Georgia is prepared to negotiate with Russia by withdrawing troops from the breakaway province of South Ossetia and creating a safe travel zone.

Quote:

The United Nations Security Council was meeting Sunday morning for the fourth time in as many days trying to resolve a conflict that began when U.S.-allied Georgia tried to control South Ossetia then said its troops had retreated in the face of Russia's tanks and aircraft. Russia is "ready to put an end to the war," said Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who also accused the U.N. secretary-general's office of taking Georgia's side. However, Russia also has deployed a naval squadron off the coast of Abkhazia, another separatist region in Georgia, and its aircraft bombed the outskirts of Tblisi, the Georgian capital. Georgia's Foreign Ministry said its soldiers were observing a cease-fire on orders of the president and notified Russia's envoy to Tbilisi.

"They're ready for immediate talks with the Russian Federation," confirmed U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynne Pascoe during a briefing to the Security Council. He said Georgia's "humanitarian corridor" for civilians, refugees and troops would help facilitate the negotiations. Responding to Churkin's remarks, British Deputy Ambassador Karen Pierce defended U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's office as impartial. "An attack on the Secretariat is an attack on the institution," she said. "It does it no credit." She questioned why Russia was not willing to agree to an immediate cease-fire, and called on Russia to use its influence in Abkhazia to control forces seeking to widen the conflict. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad also accused Russia of resisting attempts to make peace.

Many of the council members take sides with Georgia, which is not a council member. Georgia's ambassador, who was present Sunday, can only join the council's open meetings, not its private talks, and then again only by invitation. But Russia is one of five nations with veto power on the 15-nation council. The others are Britain, China, France and the U.S. "The time has come for us all to show our responsibility and to end a deteriorating process," said French Deputy Ambassador Jean-Pierre Lacroix, whose nation holds the European Union presidency for the rest of this year.

Russia Ready to Negotiate - TIME

Eagle One · 08-11-2008, 11:29 AM

I'd laugh if the US packed up the 2,000 Georgians in Iraq, gave them all new weapons and transported them back to Georgia. And slip a few hundred SEALS and Rangers into that transport.

Babax · 08-11-2008, 03:32 PM

Well, it`s very sad to read this post. Guys, you are really brainwashed! How would you dicribe this report? YouTube - American citizen telling the truth about Georgian invade in South Osetia
(American citizen telling the truth about Georgian invade in South Osetia)

Eagle One · 08-12-2008, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Babax

Well, it`s very sad to read this post. Guys, you are really brainwashed! How would you dicribe this report? YouTube - American citizen telling the truth about Georgian invade in South Osetia
(American citizen telling the truth about Georgian invade in South Osetia)

To Babax: In your haste to find some way to blame America, you're ignoring the facts. The Russians are the invaders. The Georgians are fighting for their country. Russia is the largest country on the planet, occupying one-sixth of the Earth's land area. How did they get that much land? By murdering millions of people, stealing their land, and enslaving them under communist rule. They have stolen the wealth and the freedom from every country they've occupied, and have failed to improve even one of the occupied countries. Russia is a complete and utter failure. We fought them in Korea and Vietnam, now we should once again draw the line at Georgia. What would I say if we killed a half-million Russians? I'd say That's a pretty good start.

As for the video, I'll dismiss that as hysteria and confusion of war, media warfare, or just the raving of a pinhead communist expat. The facts about Russia and who is attacking whom remains the same.

BTW, checheck out his "youtube" link; it's "http://ru.youtube". LOL.

reallygreatidea · 08-12-2008, 12:35 PM

I have been following this pretty closely, this is madness. but Russia has always been friggin crazy. OMG i feel so bad for all those people.