Russia vs. Georgia

radnan said:
Georgia (USA) vs. South Ossetia (Russia)
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Fixed ...

... at least from the viewpoint of Nashi -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashi_(youth_movement)

Btw. I saw that one comming since declaration of independence of Kosovo...
 
Argumentum ad verecundiam.

It's a bit early to say much about it, we've got so few facts.

I do wonder where the money is.
 
I think Russia is going to use this as a excuse to make Georgia into a puppet nation. That way, they can stop NATO and the EU from advancing into former Soviet Republics. I remember in those very troubled Ukranian elections (a guy was even poisoned, if I remember right), there were even rumors of Russian Tanks advancing in Ukraine.
 
Wooz said:
I do wonder where the money is.
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Oil pipelines apperantly for the US. Security issues for the russians. (NATO digging into what russia consider their sphere of influence) Personal vendettas for the locals The question we should also ask is who the money is on. Who do people think will get out on top on this.
 
radnan said:
Read all the news but still - Can anyone offer some insight into this ? Maybe some of the russian forum members ?
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Anyone who follows Russian politics saw this one coming a mile away. It's not as easy as Russia vs Georgia or Georgia vs South Ossetia, despite what Nashi idiots might say.

Look at it this way, South Ossetia had a referendum in 2006 voting for the continued independence of the breakaway state, and with a turn-out of 95%, 99% votes yes. There is some dispute regarding the validity of this referendum, but amusingly that doesn't matter because no one in the West was going to back up breakaway South Ossetia anyway, there's no political interest in it.

So Georgia continues to include and wish to integrate South Ossetia, against the will of many of its people. This has moved into full-scale fighting several times, and in the past decade it was often pressure from Russia that kept Georgia for moving in and simply muscling out the native Ossetians. From the big cease-fire of 1992, Georgia still illegally holds a lot of South Ossetian land.

So the status was an uneasy truce with Georgian holding bits of land and looking to move in on the rest of the de facto independent South Ossetian lands.

Now the moment Georgia had its great Rose Revolution we all knew this was coming. Since they became the pet project of the US and EU, Georgia now feels they can stop being thumbed under by Russia. Parts of that is great, since Russia did have a lot of illegitimate powerbrokering over Georgia that really needed to be ended, but when it comes to South Ossetia, this spells trouble. As I said, this is no real surprise to anyone who knew the situation.

And so Georgia decided now was the time, broke the truce with South Ossetia and moved their troops into Ossetian lands. Russia retaliated in support of the Ossetian militia. Both moves are illegal and illegitimate from the viewpoint of international law.

Georgia had a plan for attacking South Ossetia, and Russia had a plan ready to retaliate. Now Georgia is hanging its paws and looking at the West with puppy eyes going "can't you see we're being invaded?"

And the horribly amusing thing is that we'll probably fall for it. Small, poor democratic Georgia automatically looks like the good guy fighting against big ol' semi-democratic Russia.

Besides, we have an oil/gas-pipeline running right by South Ossetia. Can't risk losing that.
 
I always find discussing such conflicts without a proper grasp in the history and culture of the area, an obviously bad thing. Its easy to support a side for the wrong (or no) reasons, getting caught up in the bare-bones black and white media brouhaha portrayal of the conflict.

(So naturally I'll do just that)
From the little I could garner from the irrefutably un-subjective and accurate Wikipedia's coverage of the South Ossetia, and the dusty inner confines of my memory, what is now known as South Ossetia today, was once a Georgian province like any other (Samachablo, if I'm not (read: wikipedia isn't) wrong). Some of the Ossetians pushed around by history's invisible forces of change, eventually settled in the in aforementioned province of Samachablo, in which--if I understand correctly--they eventually grew to be the most prominent ethnic group. Come some time, old Imperial Mother Russia swoops in to take Georgia, with the Ossetian dominated province of Samachalbo. Fast forward some more, Bolshevik revolution takes place, and before Georgia is once again annexed into her almighty sista, Ossetians tries to secede, but their efforts are quickly quelled; according to wikipedia: according to Ossetian sources: quite brutally quelled.

Now we has nowness, and what is quite inarguably a war. So barring my many misunderstandings, simplifications, and general ignorance on the subject, I suppose the question you have to ask yourself, (much like in the case of Kosovo) does populating an initially foreign land, eventually yield the right to the land? What bares greater precedent: the historical heritage of the greater country, or the genuine identity of local population (nation)?



Please correct me on any false assertions, and excuse my indelicate and ignorant handling of the conflict.
 
Jabu said:
I suppose the question you have to ask yourself, (much like in the case of Kosovo) does populating an initially foreign land, eventually yield the right to the land?
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That is an incredibly irrelevant question.

The Ossetians have been where they are now longer than the United States has existed or Russia held Siberia or the Jews founded Israel.

You really, really can't start asking that question now. It's over half a millennium ago.
 
Brother None said:
The Ossetians have been where they are now longer than the United States has existed or Russia held Siberia or the Jews founded Israel.

You really, really can't start asking that question now. It's over half a millennium ago.
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Well I didn' say notin' 'bout the legitimacy of the US or Israel. Americans pretty much butchered anybody that could lay a claim on their soil. With Israel, on the other hand, don't tell me there aren't similar problems.

I have to agree that half a millenium (really that long? --actually makes sense, mongol invasion was 13th century antiquity) is an incredble amount of time--and I'm not really siding with anyone, just musing--but I don't agree that there's no case at all. I doubt that instanteously the region became solely Ossetian (but again my ignorance leaves me with but doubt), so I think you'd have to shake off some time off of that 500. But, also, again I still feel there is some (moral?) legitimacy in Georgia's stake in South Ossetia. It was their land, I remember hearing it was even their birth place. They took the Ossetians, and in effect gave their land to them.

I suppose the reason for the tension (in my brainial ethics-lobe) is a lack of a clear cut moral precedent as to who's got the moral upper ground (at least to me). But morality doesn't work on laws.

Sadly, however, perhaps more important question is what true interests the powers that are have vested in the dispute, whilst whorly trumpeting the name: morality.
 
Brother None said:
radnan said:
Read all the news but still - Can anyone offer some insight into this ? Maybe some of the russian forum members ?
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...
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Great summary! :clap:

I have been too tired yesterday to post anything more substantial.

Btw. why didn't Georgia wait with their "invasion" until they finished their military reform 2009/10?

Just doesn't make sence.
 
Allied scientific advances have surpassed arms races.
should I mention that the white russians are back.
 
Why does it seem like its mostly civilians who get hurt and there is very little in the way of direct military confrontations.

Seems very ugly to me - scare the civilians shitless - come back to mother russia...

I can't really say i favour any sides - i just think it sucks that civilians are the game points here.
 
iii said:
Btw. why didn't Georgia wait with their "invasion" until they finished their military reform 2009/10?

Just doesn't make sence.
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Indeed it doesn't. Perhaps they were relying on their allies, but it looks like that might be a mistake.

The image of President George W. Bush smiling and chatting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia from the stands of the Beijing Olympics even as Russian aircraft were shelling Georgia outlines the reality of America's Russia policy. While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries, Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.

And State Department officials made it clear on Saturday that there was no chance the United States would intervene militarily.

Bush did use tough language, demanding that Russia stop bombing. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded that Russia "respect Georgia's territorial integrity."

Well-researched demands from the Bush administration, no doubt

Anyway, it looks like this might pour over into full-blown war, in which case Georgia is pretty much fucked. Perhaps they were banking on people being so distracted by the Olympics that nobody would protest to their governments helping Georgia crush a rebellious province, but instead it looks like everyone is so distracted they might well fail to get public sympathy for their "plight".

Fuckers. Looks like they're fucked.

PS: ohlol,
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia, eclipsing the authority of President Dmitri Medvedev, left the Olympics in China and arrived Saturday evening in Vladikavkaz, a city in southern Russia just over the border that is a military staging area. State-controlled news broadcasts showed Putin meeting generals, suggesting that he was in charge of the operations on Georgian soil.

I'm so surprised.

EDIT: and the latest news is Georgia retreats.

That's a relief.

Georgia is claiming massive casualties all at the hands of evil Russians. Russia is claiming attempted genocide from Georgian devils. Typical propaganda. Knowing these two countries, they probably both managed to get some blood on their hands in these few days.

Still, this comparison from BBC shows why this was always a bad idea:
GEORGIA
Total personnel: 26,900
Main battle tanks (T-72): 82
Armoured personnel carriers: 139
Combat aircraft (Su-25): Seven
Heavy artillery pieces (including Grad rocket launchers): 95
RUSSIA
Total personnel: 641,000
Main battle tanks (various): 6,717
Armoured personnel carriers: 6,388
Combat aircraft (various): 1,206
Heavy artillery pieces (various): 7,550
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I'm Russian, so feel free to disregard everything I'm going to write below as biased.

Now, I've been watching this conflict very closely and, while I'm deeply concerned about the loss of civilian life, this is exactly where everything was going for a while.

During Soviet times, SO(South Ossetia) was an autonomous part of Georgia. in the 90's, GO wanted to keep SO, while SO wanted independence, so they started a war. Eventually SO declared an independence(with our help), but no one really recognized it, so de-facto it stayed a part of GO, with RU, GO and SO peacekeepers in there.

Now things were OK for a while, with fighting every now and then, but nothing big. Then Saakshvili came. Part of his campaign promise was to reintegrate SO, he even appointed "Reintegration Minister" Obviously he had a strong US backing, but, regardless, so far he's been unsuccessful with his promise

Few weeks ago, random rocket shootings from SO separatists restarted, but only after 5 years of worsening RU/GO relations. So, on the eve of olympics, GO breaks "Olympic Truce" and starts bombarding Tsshinvali(SO capital) with Grad(dunno what you call it in english, but basically it's the thing that fires bunch of rockets at once, kinda like smaller scale carpet bombing), then they move troops in, destroy 8 villages, all while continuosly bombing Tsshinvalli(TS). So they kill a fuckload off SO citizens(93% of whom have RU passports -- we gave out passports left and right for last few years, purely political move), AND 8 Russian peacekeepers. Medvedev was like W.T.F?!

We called for a UN session, they were completely worthless, couldn't even come up with a statement regarding the issue. Meanwhile SO reported 1000+ civilians dead and 10 RU peacekeeprs dead, and 30 wounded. So we moved in.

We've been fighting GO for the last 2 days now, bombing their military bases, ports, and cities with strong military presence. There have been about 300 civilian casualties on GO side. Given that, our troops have not crossed SO/GO border. We demand complete GO withdrawal from SO, AND signing of a non agression commitment.

Now my two cents.

Saak. had US backing. Likely he got an OK to raise some pulses, but being a delusional bastard he is, he desided that it was a good time to fulfill his promised. But US didn't think so. So when US didn't really backed him on that an RU got REALLY pissed, he got proper fucked. What happens now, I don't know.

Also, Time has a good article on this http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1831073,00.html

EDIT: Oh yeah, I just read that we're moved our Navy up to the GO border too. I really hope we stop soon. GO had enough.
 
Read the thread, Incognito, I'm afraid you're not saying much that hasn't been said already.

More importantly:

Incognito said:
but no one really recognized it, so de-facto it stayed a part of GO, with RU, GO and SO peacekeepers in there.
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You mean de jure a part of Georgia, but de facto independent.
 
Brother None said:
Read the thread, Incognito, I'm afraid you're not saying much that hasn't been said already.

More importantly:

Incognito said:
but no one really recognized it, so de-facto it stayed a part of GO, with RU, GO and SO peacekeepers in there.
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You mean de jure a part of Georgia, but de facto independent.
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Sorry, I just felt like speaking out. Obviously, this is a VERY important event for me.

And, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, so pardon wrong usage of terminology.
 
Incognito said:
Sorry, I just felt like speaking out. Obviously, this is a VERY important event for me.
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I'm just kiddin', man.

As for "very" important, it's just a small 2-day war in shithole, Krablakistan, mang. If this serves to bring out the xenophobe dormant in every Russian again, that's probably the worst thing it did :P
 
Brother None said:
I'm just kiddin', man.

As for "very" important, it's just a small 2-day war in shithole, Krablakistan, mang. If this serves to bring out the xenophobe dormant in every Russian again, that's probably the worst thing it did :P
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That's not what I meant by important. It means a lot to me to see Russia to finally stop backing down in front of US and to hold it's own ground. It shows that we are, in fact, on our way to becoming the second superpower again. Now, if only we could triple our military spending, and modernize our equipment...Oh, and, stop depending on natural resources as the only revenue source...Oh, AND, reform our police...

EDIT: on the side note, dead black people found in Tshinvali...WAIT, WHAT?!
 
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