Posts Tagged ‘Abkhazia’
Posted on August 17, 2008 - by Venik
Russia’s War Booty
Strength and composition of the Georgian army are a big mystery. I checked over a dozen of authoritative sources and no two report the same numbers. Jane’s published a detailed list of major weapons acquisitions by Georgia since 2000. However, in the past few days the Russian military captured weapons not previously known to be [...]
Posted on August 15, 2008 - by Venik
Georgia’s Attack on South Ossetia: Washington’s Role
Elusive NATO Membership At the NATO Summit in Bucharest in April 2008 Georgia was denied Membership Action Plan. Aside from Russia’s vehement opposition, the key issues outlined in the NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan, accepted by Georgia in October 2004, remain unresolved. These issues are: Georgia’s antiquated military equipment, insufficient training and deployability of its [...]
Posted on August 14, 2008 - by Venik
The Cease-Fire Deal and Life in Tbilisi
Mark Deen and Reed Landberg of Bloomberg have beat me to the punch with their Russia’s War With Georgia May Reopen U.S. Rift With Europe. Next time I will have to type faster. If you follow the news from Russia and Georgia, you are probably aware of the extraordinary effort by Nicolas Sarkozy to broker [...]
Posted on August 14, 2008 - by Venik
Russians in Georgia: Goals and Consequences
The Christian Science Monitor – of all newspapers – published perhaps the most relevant and concise description of what Moscow has achieved so far with its blitzkrieg response to Georgia’s sneak-attack on South Ossetia. “If the Russians stop hostilities now, they will have redrawn the whole strategic situation in the Caucasus, to the detriment of [...]
Posted on August 12, 2008 - by Venik
Georgia’s Blunder
Saakashvili’s hysterical propaganda aside, it is now evident that Russia’s operation in Georgia was strictly limited to defending the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia against Georgian aggression. Consider the facts: Russia deployed just 6,000 troops in South Ossetia and 9,000 troops in Abkhazia (and even these modest numbers are probably overstated by the [...]
Posted on August 10, 2008 - by Venik
War in Georgia: What’s Coming
The EU wants to blame Russia for the escalating conflict in Georgia, but Brussels cannot ignore the terrible casualties inflicted by Georgian artillery on the civilian population of South Ossetia. Today’s visit to Tbilisi by France’s foreign minister suggests that Saakashvili is being pressured by the EU to back down. The US, on the other [...]
Posted on August 9, 2008 - by Venik
Georgia on a Path to Self-Destruction
I lived in Tbilisi for about a year when I was in sixth grade. Some of my best childhood memories are from that time now more than twenty years ago. My father’s family moved to Tbilisi in 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. My father was three years old then. He spent his [...]
Posted on August 8, 2008 - by Venik
Timeline of Georgia-Russia Conflict
Reuters just published a “TIMELINE – Georgia and Russia’s worsening relations” (August 8, 2008; http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN08472548). As the poor and tiny Georgia, under the guidance of its fearless US-educated leader, is desperately trying to start a war with Russia, I find it is important to amend the Reuters’ accurate but incomplete timeline with some of the [...]
Posted on March 29, 2008 - by Venik
Russia and the US heading toward a confrontation
It seems that Russia and the US are moving toward some major headbutting in April. First, there’s the issue of Kosovo and the announcement by the US that it intends to provide weapons to the breakaway province. Russia opposes the move, saying that this would be a violation of the UN SC Resolution 1244 (which [...]
