Russia, and especially Putin, have learned quite a bit this past decade and a half in regards to the new rules of geopolitics. Every action taken by the Russians that was criticized by the Americans and the western press was quickly defused with the Russians throwing back into their faces everything that the Americans/Brits have done since the end of the Cold War?

Invasion? Sorry, humanitarian intervention.

Destruction? No, we’re countering ethnic cleansing and genocide conducted by the Georgians.

Regime change? Well, if Hussein had to go, so must Saakashvili.

The USA had to be taken down a notch and that’s exactly what’s happened. But rather than learning a lesson about hypocrisy, the Americans are even more intent on engaging in American exceptionalism, as Cheney, McCain, Rice, and Bush indicate with their poor arguments.

Putin plays chess while Dubya plays checkers.

Hello,

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili declared Georgia’s victory over Russia during a mass rally in Tbilisi yesterday. This was just hours after he panicked the city and lied about Russians invading Tbilisi and Gori! With a mass evacuation happening because of his foolery!

But in Georgia, people’s moods improved as they learned that Russia’s troops were not close to Tbilisi, moreover, they even hadn’t entered Gori.

This information was reported by Georgia’s all military bodies on Monday night, which caused quite a panic in the capital: people hurried to leave the city, and you could see long queues in the shops – everyone wanted to buy bread and other foodstuffs. Later it was found out that the mess was a result of the Georgian military men’s mistake: they took a column of their own trucks, tanks and armored troop-carriers, which were evacuated from Gori, for Russian machines. (Link)

You see the fact is: You have been told that Russia destroyed Gori with tanks and ground forces. You have been told and shown pictures of South Ossetia’s destruction played off as pictures of Gori destruction. By the way Gori is the spot that Georgia launched the Grad Missiles from, that struck the Ossetians while they where sleeping. That is why Russia did air raids on the area around Gori because it was a Military stronghold of Georgia.

I want you to see a video of the Great Saakashvili in one of his finest roles as an actor playing a President….

“Saakashvili heard the noise of Russian airplane and trying to escape under bodies of bodyguards. When the noise is gone, bodyguards tells journalists to stop shooting and go away. Saakashvili is very scared, he is running away for his life.)

What more can be said….

Kyle & Svet

comments always welcome.

Hello,

If you would like to see the results of the Georgian War on the Capital of South Ossetia follow this link…..

http://en.rian.ru/photolents/20080812/115971545.html

The tall buildings you see are called Flats. Flats are where people live. In this part of the world a Flat houses the whole family from Grandma to Great Grand kids. They all live under the same roof.

So if you bomb a flat you are killing the whole family. The small hole on the outside of the building is like a bullet hole on a human. Tiny entrance but what a mess inside!

Sad!

Kyle & Svet

South Ossetia: This wicked, dirty, bitter war…
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080813/115999488.html

13/08/2008

TSKHINVAL, SOUTH OSSETIA (Alan Tsorion for RIA Novosti). – It is evening of August 7. The South Ossetian capital is quiet. After so much shelling and endless gunfire it feels like the silence can be smelled and breathed.

A deep breath fills the lungs, and straightens your insides crumpled in the fist of war like the cellophane wrapper from a cigarette pack. I breathe in the calm. The silence is only broken by mice stirring somewhere between the ceiling and the garret. It is hard to believe that anyone can go about one’s daily chores at such a time.

The rodents up there are busily moving things, rolling from place to place as if they know that several hours ago the Georgian president promised not to shell the Ossetian capital any more. If there is to be no shelling you can go back to your daily chores.

However, the rodents and I have only five more minutes to attend to our household chores. At 10.05 p.m. the “mice” play comes to an end: Mikheil Saakashvili breaks his word. Rockets and shells rain on the city, shaking the walls and windows. It is as if every blast chips away parts of the sky and hurls them against the window. Along with several other people we rush to the basement of the house in Stalin Street (now probably destroyed) in the center of Tskhinval.

We are dressed in what the raid caught us in – slippers, bathrobes and shorts… Many had already gone to bed when the Georgian shells started raining on the city, and all the agreements and promises flew away with the chunks of house foundations and twisted metal that used to be cars.

“Ma tars, ma tars…” (Ossetian: “Don’t be afraid”), a mother calms her son Batradz. The boy, aged about 8, has buried has head in his mother’s lap and, jolting with every explosion, asks her: “Mum, why are they shooting, don’t they know that the Olympics start tomorrow? Why doesn’t anyone tell them that there should be no fighting during the Olympics?”

At around 11 p.m. the lights go out in the basement where we are hiding, like in the whole of Tskhinval. Your senses become sharper when it is pitch-dark. Like a blind man you distinguish the slightest shades of sounds, which immediately translate themselves into pictures before your mind’s eye.

Up on the surface, the black night sky is illuminated by the white flare of exploding shells, momentarily making it look like a huge photograph negative. Splinters whiz by like bumblebees flying close to the ground. Bullets emit a strange whistle as if somebody has shaped his lips to whistle but instead just breathes air in. The gun of an armoured vehicle goes “ta-ta-ta… ta-ta-ta”.

“Iratta razma!” (“Come on”), a focused, almost businesslike voice comes from the street. Quick steps of six pairs of military boots on broken glass and splinters of brick and plaster.

“Ma tars, Batradz. Ma tars,” the mother’s words are drowned out by the deafening echo of a shell which blasts a neighbouring block of flats to smithereens. It is as if somebody banged a heavy door close to your ear. Pieces of concrete fall from the basement ceiling…

But even the howitzers in nearby Ergneti and Nikozi do not sound as terrifying as the salvos of the Georgian Grad (Hail) artillery rockets fired from much further away, in Gori. As the rockets zero in on the target they emit a sound like a flame on gigantic arrows with burning tips. The Grads are fired at random so that the clouds of “arrows” fall on the roofs of Tskhinval’s peaceful houses.

As the shelling goes on, people get ready to spend the night in the basement.

…The morning of August 8, 5 a.m. The bombardment of the city from Georgian positions is in its seventh hour. My cell phone shows that the battery is about to die, leaving me with no communications. I ring the editorial office in Moscow to say that communications are about to be cut because I have nowhere to recharge my cell phone.

The battery in my phone is dead by 9 a.m. It is already light in Tskhinval. Remembering the great rule that “in war he who runs survives,” I leave the basement to move to another place. I run along hugging a wall, my head drawn into my shoulders. Bullets and fragments hit the road raising little fountains of dust. In the city Georgian commandos and Ossetian fighters are exchanging fire. I hear the Ossetian OMON fighters shouting: “Come on, quick! A ‘box’ [armoured vehicle – A.Ts.] is stuck on Hetagurova Street.”

Insensible to fatigue, I’m running very fast and turn the corner. “Bang!” – I fall on my stomach after being hit in my ears and eyes. Clouds of dust rise over the ground, approaching my feet. They are caused by a grenade that exploded five meters away. I get up and run, spitting out dust. Moving in my direction on the other side of the street are four Ossetian fighters. One of them reloads his automatic rifle as he runs. The oldest looks no more than 23. A few more steps and I dive into the entrance of a five-storey block of flats.

I see silhouettes of men in the doorway. Women and children are taking shelter in the basement beneath the staircase. I hear muted weeping from below. “How long will the bombing last? Let us raise our hands and surrender before they have killed us all. It looks like Russia has forgotten us,” a tired woman’s voice is heard from the basement. Surrounded by old people, women and children you cannot help feeling guilty. A young man’s place now is in the war, defending his people; he has no place among the elderly and the children.

There are about twenty people in the basement and hardly anyone dares to go up. Only an old man, Inal, a former peacekeeper who saw action in 1992, calmly strolls the street opposite the entrance while the shelling is still on. “F— the war, exercise is the main thing,” the veteran mumbles as two Ossetian policemen carry a fighter with arm and leg wounds towards the entrance.

…The wounded man has glazed eyes over which his long lashes flutter like the wings of a butterfly. He is dazed by pain. His fatigues are pierced in two places, and red arterial blood is streaming down his left hip. The fighter is carried into the entrance. A stocky policeman slings the rifle from his shoulder with a practiced movement and unwinds a bandage wound around the stock to twist a touniquet. Someone has brought ammonium chloride.

“Shai ho, kuyzh kuylyhai na maly” (“OK, a dog doesn’t die from lameness”), the policeman tells the fighter, who clenches his teeth in pain. That is the Ossetian equivalent of the Russian proverb “it will heal by the time you have your wedding.” The stocky South Ossetian policeman rubs the wounded man’s chest and face after dipping his huge work-beaten hands into a bucket of cold water. “OK, we have to go,” the policeman says grabbing the wounded man under his armpit.

“Where are you from?” the old man Inal asks me. “I am a journalist from Moscow,” I reply. “Let’s go and have a bite,” the former peacekeeper says in a voice hoarse from smoking. “War or no war, you have to eat.”

“The Russians will come today, they’ll help us,” says Inal setting fire to a piece of dry spirit which he puts on a gas stove: “I wish they would strike Gori and Tbilisi – I want nothing more.”

“Georgian tanks are already in town, it’ll be hard without the Russians,” the former peacekeeper says, sipping the freshly made coffee.

The best I can do is to keep silent. However, our silence is broken by two Georgian SU-25 planes. One of them opens fire on the house where we are – just for kicks. Inal and I hasten to the basement.

Once again damp darkness. There is a small hole where the pipes run through the wall. It faces south to where the Georgian commandos are advancing. Putting your head in the hole is dangerous: bullets come through the hole and hit the concrete basement ceiling with a hollow sound.

I catch myself thinking that my whole short life, the efforts of my grandparents who brought me up, my universities and the clever books I have read – all this was but preparation for this moment when shells explode over your head, you instinctively draw your head into your shoulders and sweat streaks down your spine. It looks as if death is nearby and it smells of dampness and the dryness of your lips. Now when the planes make another dive to fire on you, and you know that they will fire on you as the roar of the engines approaches, you feel that it may be your last day. This is not fear, but rather grief over what you might have said and done.

Suddenly the planes stop bombing and fly south towards Georgia. What’s happening? Within seconds a deafening chorus of a thousand voices shouting “Hurray!” comes from the street. A crowd is welcoming a column of Russian armored vehicles that have entered Tskhinval. “A-a-a! You have come, boys,” Inal shouts. “Now we will show them!”

I run into the street, the roar of Russian armour is heard nearby. The Russian soldiers are driving the Georgian troops out of Tskhinval. A man, his eyes bulging with horror, runs up to me. “Help me. What shall I do? I am Georgian, I worked here in Tskhinval. I am a worker, where shall I go?” he shouts in broken Russian. “Run,” I tell him, and again wonder at the wickedness of war in which innocent civilians are the first to suffer.

The clock shows 3 p.m.

At 7 p.m., when the shooting and shell blasts subside and the bursts of machinegun fire are petering out, I leave Tskhinval, engulfed in flames and sorrow. The Russian troops have driven the Georgians out of the city, but this is not yet the end of the war. There are still civilians in the city. Tskhinval is still in the grip of the dirty hands of war. A war unleashed without warning under the cover of night. A war whose victims were and will always be civilians. A war that seizes your soul and rubs it between its bloody palms like the cellophane wrapper of a cigarette pack.

Why Russia’s response to Georgia was right: posted in the Financial Times.

1. The first is not to resort to the use of force.

2. The second is to halt all military action.

3. The third is free access to humanitarian aid.

4. The fourth is that Georgian Armed Forces should return to their bases.

5. The fifth is that Russian Armed Forces should pull back to their positions prior to combat.

6. The sixth is the beginning of international discussions on the future status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and on ways to ensure their security.

” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told a news conference with his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy.”

Sounds fair to me. What about you?

Kyle & Svet

comments always welcome.

American broadcaster CNN has been accused of using misleading footage in their coverage of the conflict in South Ossetia. A Russian cameraman says footage of wrecked tanks and ruined buildings, which was purported to be the town of Gori, was in fact the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali.

Gori was said to be about to fall under the control of the Russian army but the cameraman says the video was actually shot in Tskhinvali, which had been flattened by Georgian shelling.

Aleksandr Zhukov, from the Russiya Al-Yaum channel, said: “When we arrived and news came that Gori was being shelled, I saw my footage. I said: that’s not Gori! That’s Tskhinvali. Having crawled through the length and breadth of Tskhinvali, I don’t need much to tell from which point this or that footage was recorded. I can swear in front of any tribunal. I can point at this location on the map of the town, because I and the cameraman of the Rossiya channel videotaped that.”

Good Ol CNN…

Kyle

comments always welcome.

(MOSCOW) —Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered a halt to military action in Georgia Tuesday, saying it had punished Georgia and restored security for civilians and Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia.

In a nationally televised speech he ordered the military to defend itself and quash any aggressive action and armed resistance from Georgian forces.

Russia’s foreign minister said that Georgia’s president must leave office and Georgian troops should stay out of the breakaway South Ossetia region for good.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow won’t talk to President Mikhail Saakashvili and Saakashvili “better go.”

The Russian statements came as French President Nicolas Sarkozy was heading to Moscow to negotiate an EU-brokered truce for the fierce conflict over the breakaway region.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered an end to military operations against Georgia, the Kremlin says.

He told officials he had taken the decision to end the operation after restoring security for civilians and peacekeepers in South Ossetia.

However, Russia has remained highly critical of Georgia’s leadership, and there were no signs of imminent talks.

Looks like French President Nicolas Sarkozy may have worked some magic…..

Hello,

Lets see what is happening in Georgia….
——————————————————————————
1. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country currently chairs the EU, is to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow before travelling to Georgia for talks with its president, Mikhail Saakashvili.

2. Russian-backed Abkhazia say they have begun an operation against Georgian forces, which now appear under pressure on two fronts. Abkhazia says they are trying to push Georgian forces from a strategic gorge in the west of the breakaway province.

3. George W Bush said Russian actions in Abkhazia and the other breakaway province of South Ossetia were “unacceptable in the 21st Century” and that Moscow was guilty of a “dramatic and brutal escalation”. (What a statement from a killer of 100,000 + Iraq’s)

4. Georgia has been withdrawing its troops and armour towards Tbilisi after four days of bloody fighting in South Ossetia with Russian troops and rebel fighters. (But Georgia has still continued to fight in South Ossetia)

5. No one expected Georgia to be occupied that fast, not even Saakashvili, who, Georgian Kommersant sources say, has received an ultimatum from Moscow of three points in exchange for peace. The main point, in addition to capitulation and signing an agreement on the non use of force in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, is his resignation. (Good Idea!)

6. Over 30,000 refugees have crossed the border between South Ossetia and Russia in the last four days, seeking safety, but not all of them made it alive. Some South Ossetians risked their lives to bring the bodies of their loved ones to North Ossetia because they were unable to bury them back home.

7. We have watched media from the USA. The air waves are flying with how bad and evil Russia is. No one seems to care that Georgia started this by killing several thousand South Ossetians. Russia took about 20 hours to respond to the attack. Seems a little slow to me. Russia was not ready for this kind of attack on South Ossetia. (Contrary to Western news)

8. Ukraine, another American Democratic Puppet is starting to flap it jaws like I said they would in a previous article.

9. The French Foreign Minister and head of the European mediation mission, Bernard Kouchner, has visited one of the biggest refugee camps in North Ossetia-Alania – a region that’s part of Russia and borders South Ossetia.

10. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered an end to military operations against Georgia, the Kremlin says.

Now we wait and see if Georgia plays games.

Kyle & Svet