Understanding the Russian Invasion of Georgia

Both countries blame each other for genocide.

Russian soldier mans a gate in Georgia Photo: worldupon.blogspot.com Videos Courtesy: CNN and Russia Today & YouTube Double click on videos twice to watch them full screen

(SALEM, Ore.) - Accusations are flying as to who is responsible for the bloodshed in Georgia, a country that many Russians say has become a puppet government of the U.S. and other western nations.

Presidents Bush & Saakashvili

Both the United States and Israel have been providing Georgia with military hardware under increasingly friendly political arrangements in recent years. We can only hope that this did not give the former Soviet Republic's leaders a false sense of courage against its neighbor to the north: Mother Russia. It may turn out to be a fatal mistake.

Despite its current alliances, the violence in Georgia undoubtedly evolves from tensions that have been simmering since the end of the Cold War in the 1980s.

The former Soviet Republic of Georgia is part of the United Nations and it has been vying for membership in the European Union and NATO. But the country has never really cooled off in the post Soviet years and is marred by memories of a massacre in the capital city of Tbilisi 1989 and a Civil War that began in 1991 and lasted until 1995. There has been progress and the most recent major development was a bloodless coup in 2003 that is known as the 'Rose Revolution.'

The country's often disputed leader Eduard Shevardnadze, was deposed by the Rose Revolution, after Georgian opposition and international monitors asserted that recent parliamentary elections were marred by fraud. The revolution led to the election of Mikheil Saakashvili as President of Georgia in 2004.

After taking power in 2003, the current Georgian President declared that all land within its borders belonged to Georgia. This idea did not sit well in South Ossetia where friendly relations with Russia are the norm and thousands of these residents, technically residents of Georgia, have Russian passports and are considered Russian citizens.

The Conflict

Russia claims that beginning Friday, August 8th, Georgian military forces launched an attack at villages within South Ossetia "razing" several around Tskhinval.

Wounded in Georgian shelling taking refuge in Tskhinvali. TASS photo/Sergei Uzakov

A columnist for the ITAR-TASS News agency wrote today that, "In less than (in) a day Georgian troops razed to the ground Tskhinval and surrounding villages by point blank fire from dominating heights.”

I had to pause over that one; I never imagined point blank shots coming from a dominating height before. At any rate, the Russian news service includes one photo of a victim of the Georgian military action. The Internet however is loaded with images and video of the situation from the Georgian point of view.

In another story, ITAR-TASS states that "Russia interfered to stop the Georgian bloodbath in breakaway Tskhinval and the genocide of South Ossetians, most of who are Russian citizens. Russian resolute retaliation to Georgian aggression triggered sharp criticism in the West showing it would prefer Moscow to be angered, but refrain from intervening, like it did in 1999."

In that article, the columnist compares Western condemnation of the invasion of Georgia's border with the U.S. military operation in Yugoslavia in the late 1990's that Moscow opposed, but allowed. It is a real stretch when considering the history of Russian behavior at war in places like Afghanistan. (see: Will Russia Repeat Horrors of Afghanistan in Georgia?)

Moscow is claiming that Georgia has committed an act of aggression against civilians, and for this reason it falls within the category “war criminal.” That came from the deputy chief of the General Staff, Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsin, today during a news conference.

“We have a working system of international rules ‘combatant- non-combatant’. The responsibility should be borne by the party that violates these rules,” Nogovitsin said.

“War on civilians is regarded as the gravest crime and this is precisely what we are witnesses to in the current conflict. The one who conducts such a war is believed as war criminal. What we have seen is actual extermination of the indigenous population of a country whose territory is a scene of combat operations.”

The Russian invasion in South Ossetia is within a region that considers itself separate from Georgia and is closely related to the Russian Federation which lies to its immediate north. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claims the Georgian military was committing genocide against the population of South Ossetia.

Worsening Conditions

Now, thousands of buildings have been damaged and destroyed as European presidents and heads of state arrive in an effort to bring peace to the region.

Georgian President Saakashvili charges the Russian government with the same crime against humanity.

He stated publicly that, "the endgame of the Russian troops is to commit ethnic cleansing and annihilation of ethnic Georgian population in entire Abkhazia."

He also declared, "we are seeing cold-blooded murder of a small country".

The BBC reported that Russia confirmed for the first time on Monday it had advanced beyond the borders of Abkhazia, saying it had launched an operation in the town of Senaki.

A British Defence official told the Interfax news agency the move was intended to prevent Georgian troops from shelling South Ossetia, and to stop them from regrouping.

Exactly who is to blame remains to be known. Georgia's Saakashvili says the invasion was carefully planned for months to coincide with the Olympics, which draws attention away from the conflict. He accused the Russians of having bad motives in their massive military attack.

David Cameron, Conservative leader with in the UK, said, "What Russia has done here is used massive and disproportionate force....It has acted as a massive and dangerous bully and we can't allow this to go ahead without it being challenged."

U.S. President George W. Bush echoed similar comments, expressing his grave concern to Moscow at the military's "disproportionate" response.

Cross Accusations

Saakashvili

Georgian President Saakashvili said, "There is an extensive battle going on in proximity of the town of Gori. Yesterday Russian forces tried to seize the town of Gori."

He says this is a town with a population of 100,000 people 45-50 kilometers away, and basically that the seizing of that town would have opened the way for Russian tanks to the nation's capital, Tbilisi.

Saakashvili continued, "The goal of this operation is not only to seize and annex part of the Georgia territory, but they clearly said that the goal of the operation is regime change in Georgia."

He says that means a change in the democratically elected government of Georgia.

"Russian tanks and many thousands of Russian troops have invaded Georgia from there and the pretext is that they want to stop a humanitarian catastrophe. Now I have to remind you that during the previous Russian invasion area roughly fifteen years ago, almost 500,000 people have been expelled from this region and they are still refugees."

He says the result is that there are only two places in that region where people now live. The President of Georgia says there has never been a time that a super power like Russia would launch up to 1,200 tanks to quell a political matter across an adjacent border. He has asked the Western nations to assist Georgia.

Medvedev

Still, Russia's President Medvedev, who also has the powers of the Commander-in-Chief under the Constitution, indicated today that they will be notching up the military action, ITAR-TASS reported.

“We’ve ended a bigger part of the operation to coerce the Georgian side to peace in South Ossetia,” he said at a meeting with Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

“The Russian peacekeeping contingent has fully taken Tskhinval /South Ossetia’s capital under control,” Medvedev said.

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Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. Today, in addition to his role as a war correspondent in Afghanistan where he spent the winter of 2006/07, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators. Tim's coverage from Iraq that was set to begin in April has been delayed and may not take place until August, 2008. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com