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A year on from the war in South Ossetia – what lessons have we learned?
MEJanssen 6 August, 2009, 04:58 That was a terrific interview with Professor Stephen Cohen. He said exactly what I have been thinking - that the Georgian war was another "proxy war" between USA and Russia. I suspected that from the reports from the eyewitnesses in South Ossetia, who said there were Americans included with the Georgian dead. I wonder if their families in America ever heard the truth about why their sons did not come home. Have we learned lessons from that war? Well, to judge by some of the words out of Washington DC, no. However, some of us plebes on Main Street have started to pay attention to what our government is doing in the Caucasus. Opinions in the USA are not uniform. Biden and his ilk have the loudest voices right now, but that will not always be the case.
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Wonderer 7 August, 2009, 14:15 Judging by news images on RT and other news channels, no one has started rebuilding the ruins of the conflict. Where is Russia now? Isn't this their opportunity to shine? Perhaps their economy is indeed as bad as in Biden's slander. Or maybe such a small and sparsely populated area as South Ossetia is nothing more than a political piece in the board game called "enemies and politicized media everywhere" played by the Russian policy makers.
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MEJanssen 7 August, 2009, 16:10 @ Wonderer, I also questioned the slow clean-up, at first. Evidently Georgia had shut off the only gas line into South Ossetia, and Gazprom had to lay another pipeline over the mountains from Russia to S.O. They may still be building it. Also electricity and water/sewer infrastructure had to be rebuilt, and it was hard to do over the winter. The RT films show the ruins still standing in Tskinvali, but sometimes the camera pans back and shows new foundations being poured next door. So there is some reconstruction, at last.
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sevodnya_net 7 August, 2009, 21:25 One year on from the war South Ossetia is effectively cut off from the outside world. One wonders why Russia insists that no journalists, peace monitors, or indeed anyone else from the free world, can have ready access to what is effectively now a new province of the Russian Federation. Instead we are fed ludicrous propaganda which only insults its intended audience (that is if anyone with any intelligence is still paying attention). At least Wonderer isn't fooled, by the look of it: "Political piece in the board game" is exactly what this impoverished enclave is.
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Saya 8 August, 2009, 10:05 I came in on this conflict very late, because I just didn't want to know if it was true that Russia was the aggressor. I was always skeptical, and when I finally got the guts to look it up, it turned out that I was right all along. I only wish I could've known then and done something. I want to do something on a larger scale than just disseminating information, now, but I don't want death threats.
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MEJanssen 8 August, 2009, 15:50 I suppose we could say that the entire Caucasus is a "political piece in the board game" - one played by a long line of countries and now the USA. I have long had the idea that we are playing a giant game of "Risk", only in our game, real people die. "Ludicrous propaganda"? From whom? If you mean by what RT says, they back up their "propaganda" with video, eye witnesses, interviews, etc. The main things CNN and FOX had to offer last year were shrieks that "Russia invades AGAIN!" but hardly any details. I did actually look for evidence that Russia was at fault, but found very little. I was raised with the idea that Russia was at fault for everything, from massacre of innocents to earthquakes to cattle murrain. So, considering that Russia may not be at fault about something is a new thing for me. On the other hand, there is evidence that FOX suppressed witness stories and CNN mis-labeled their videos to make Russia look bad. Tell me again about "propaganda". I live in the country of Madison Avenue and the state of Hollywood, so I am used to wading through a lot of it.
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Aryan_Russian_Indian 8 August, 2009, 21:58 Just yesterday BBC showed the interview from S.Ossetian man, He still lives in Tent, he was talking about how he spent the whole winter in tent. EU, UN and US gave all the help to Georgia, but No one other than Russia Helped Ossetia and Abkhazia. people on NET are so blind that they can ONLY read what Americans want them to read, SHE can come here and write everything BAD about Russia, BUT blind lady don't bother to read what S.Ossetian person has to say (never mind what Russia has to say) At least listen to Abkhazian and Ossetian people, You will find the truth. You don't have to read Russan point of view, but for christ sake, look something other than American Media. Russia did right thing and ONLY lesson learned is IF Clinton can go to save American, all the way to N.Korea, than Russia Definitely can save Russian Citizen on its own border. Learn the lesson well, Georgia, US.
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Marzipan6 9 August, 2009, 00:38 For Russia’s neighbours, the Georgian situation has simply re-enforced what they already know very well, namely, that Russian behaviour is dangerous, and that Russia constantly looks for a convergence of pretext and weakness in its neighbourhood for an opportunity to step in and re-build empire. Russia’s neighbours have had their conviction reconfirmed that their security depends on strong alliances, to avoid them being picked off one by one. Meanwhile the wider international community, who perhaps haven’t known Russia quite as well, have had the blinkers fall from their eyes. Russia has gained two little slivers of dependant territories which it alone with Nicaragua recognize as independent nations. But it has lost a colossal amount of trust and good will from the world, and perhaps this accounts for the absolute avalanche of articles in RT and elsewhere in the Russian media that seeking to put a positive spin on the matter. All-in-all, not a foreign policy triumph.
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johnx 9 August, 2009, 21:36 @Marzipan6 It just proves that NATO/EU/US and the Middle Eastern proxies want to destroy Russia just like they did the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia. The US and EU objective since 79 is to destroy Russia as a state and Africanise it creating vassal independent states loyal to the west and exploit Russia’s natural resources. The is best layed out in Brezinski’s 97 book The Grand Chessboard. From there support of terrorism, separatism and organised crime, engineered economic collapse of the post Soviet economy of Russia and deliberate decline in population for massive ethnic demographic shifts to anti-Russian CIA/Soros coloured revolutions and know proxy wars. This just a reply of what they did when they tried to install Communism in Russia Georgia being what happen was in 1904 and Soros taking up Schiff’s position. Yugoslavia was the testing ground/model for what they have against Russia. They want to Balkanise Russia starting with the Caucasus region Russia would not have to enter and intervene had the US and UK not vetoed an emergency so it was obviously organised and pre-planned with US and NATO co-operation. And the EU, US, Turkey, Pakistan and there Middle Eastern vassal states have been sponsoring separatism and terrorism since 91/92 in Russia as well as terrorist groups in Central Asia.
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johnx 9 August, 2009, 21:38 @sevodnya_net It was cut of from the outside world after Georgia’s failed invasion after the break up of the USSR when they abolished there autonomous representation in Georgia and cut of all trade and travel to the regions. Explain exactly what was the point of the military blitz on South Ossetia other than ethnic cleansing. They did the same thing to the Serbs in Krajina in 95 called Operation Storm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIh8_UJrOGc&feature=related In fact it turned out MPRI were training Georgian forces in sabotage techniques. Like the OSCE who abandoned there posts who abandoned there posts hours prior to the assault so they had fore knowledge of it just like they gave GPS coordinates to NATO and the KLA prior to the Kosovo war in 99. Or the international media that acts as a propaganda outfit for western foreign policy like Reuters faking pictures during the conflict. http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?p=2287 CNN liked RT’s reporting so much they repackaged there RT footage of South Ossetia and claimed it was Gori in Georgia. @Wonderer The whole region is in ruins plus the location makes it difficult to get supplies and construction material into the region from North Ossetia then there’s also unexploded cluster bombs and bobby trap devices in the area
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R John 10 August, 2009, 09:14 There is a real logistical problem getting supplies into the area, My wife has travelled the mountainous road from Vladikavkaz to south Ossetia and she told me its can be treacherous especially in winter, Also we have to remember that the Georgians destroyed much of the basic infrastructure gas pipes, water & sewerage, Electrical supplies, all these had to be addressed first as well as mine and munitions clearance, extensive work has been done unfortunately the press can’t photograph new pipe lines buried underground. The new homes, schools, hospitals will come but it takes time.
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Marzipan6 11 August, 2009, 11:24 NATO, etc. want to destroy Russia? What an absolutely amazing idea! How do you destroy geographically the largest nation on earth, and one of the largest in terms of population? You can’t! What a futile waste of time and effort any attempt to that end would be. A far, far more sensible and logical goal would be to help Russia start seeing itself as a normal country amongst other normal countries, and to behave accordingly. This would involve Russia losing its view of itself as always being a special case – whether a special victim of all and sundry, or a special case because it can’t make up its mind whether it’s a country or an empire, or a special case because the rules of economic and political behaviour that apply to everyone else for some reason shouldn’t apply to it, or a special case because its view of history is the only correct one and everyone else has to toe the line, or else. It is precisely this kind of change that the West and its institutions have been trying to help Russia to achieve. Their efforts have not been perfect and have not always been based on a realistic appraisal of Russia’s psychology and circumstances, and undoubtedly there would have been some rogue operators in the equation from time to time, too. But to impute the motive that someone or another wants to “destroy Russia” is nonsense. The world’s efforts to assist Russia have thus far have not worked as well as hoped because Russia’s own goal has not been to progress from its past orientations, but rather, to justify those orientations and the past crimes it committed on their basis. Russia still insists on being treated as a special case, and still views itself as a place where the accepted norms of international behaviour shouldn’t quite apply. As long as that remains Russia’s view, no amount of external assistance will help it to change. Changing that can come only from within.
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Wonderer 11 August, 2009, 14:38 Spot on Marzipan6! That is exactly what Russia should do, start behaving like a normal country. It is the easy way out to divert attention from domestic problems such as corruption and lack of free press to a supposedly hostile outside world around you. Trying to portrait a person who boasts of slaughtering people in the toilet as an admirable leader is as sickening as admiring G.W. Bushes intelligence would be.
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sevodnya_net 11 August, 2009, 20:55 Re the comments of johnx and R.John on the matter of S. Ossetia's isolation from the outside world, I'm afraid that it was largely the actions of the Russians which destroyed much of S. Ossetia's infrastructure. And, whatever one thinks of Georgia's political overtures to the region the fact remains that S. Ossetia faced a choice: join what passes for the "normal" world in the Caucasus by accepting autonomy within the Georgian state (by local standards a progressive, free and outward looking state), or go for separation from Georgia and pretend that that is independence: that option leaves you politically, economically and geographically isolated but hey, the nasty Georgians have gone (many of them murdered themselves). I do not for one moment claim that Georgia is innocent in this affair. Neither they nor Russia emerged from the recent conflict looking good, for very different reasons, but you should ask yourselves why, despite what many claim on here, Western reporting of the conflict presents two sides of a dirty ethnic conflict and the Russian side presents only one. I'm always suspicious of propagandists. They are generally up to no good, and this is certainly the case here.
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MEJanssen 12 August, 2009, 02:17 Western press presented two sides of the conflict? I disagree. That was my whole problem with the coverage - I was looking for anything I could read last year about the war, and all I found in the west was VERY biased stories about how evil the Russians were. There was nothing about Georgian ethnic cleansing and very few pictures about the devastation in South Ossetia. There were LOTS of pictures of Saakashvili ducking when planes flew overhead. The Georgian video taken by a soldier who was laughing while he shot holes in apartment blocks was on YouTube, but it was not aired on an American or English news site. Western news outlets presented only a partial picture of the war, and anybody who did not take the time to dig for information got a very warped idea of what happened.
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DD 12 August, 2009, 22:23 Yes MEJanssen, I totally agree with you, but as you see there are some people on this forum who forget about the Ossetian people, they just keep spreading anti-Russian rethoric in any case, any event. They keep whining about "occupation of the Baltics" by the SU, while at the same time they totally approve the occupation of the Ossetians by Georgia, the occupation of the Palestines by the Israelis. They might refer to historically based arguements in their case but not use those same arguements on the Ossetians. On the one hand they recognize the province of Kosovo as independant, producing some conflicting arguements to justify their point of view, but then yet not for the Ossetians. Why do they do that one might say? Because of the simple reason : Ossetians are pro-Russian. Greetings from Brussels.
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Patriot 16 August, 2009, 00:08 Unfortunately, the break up of the Soviet Union has brought a lot of trouble to the people of the former Soviet Republics. As expected the USA and NATO will do everything they can to come nearer to the Russian Federation and at the same time open up new routes for the big corporations. In other words the "Divide and Rule" politics is fully operational and rather dangerous for global peace.
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cobra maneuver 16 August, 2009, 18:02 Live far away in Canada and am glad to find here on this forum opinions that are like mine .Thx RT what a week here...with all-media coverage of ««bad, aggressive Russia«« Uf...... finally it is over with this bullshit NATO -US propaganda. HOW can my own people swallow all this nonsense US blabla without asking themselves questions.....must be our harsch winters that leave their brains in a sort of ««permafrost«« To Marzipan6 : you are my favorite !
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R John 19 August, 2009, 13:38 The recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Russia has led to very dangerous consequences for the Russian Federation itself, over the last twelve months there has been a dramatic upsurge in violence throughout the caucuses we have witnessed bomb blasts and assassination of political leaders in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya. Only days ago in Nazran we witnessed the worst terrorist attack in the region for 5 years. Radicals within these republics are enraged; they feel that if South Ossetia can be independent then their wish for independence should also be granted. And they now probably think if they push hard enough they might get what they want. I know that the situation in Chechnya has become so dangerous that Russian civilian workers attached to the military are now not allowed to work in the area because of almost daily sniper fire on the military compound. Russia’s recognition has stirred up a “hornets nest” and it appears to me that radicals in the 3 hostile republics are now acting in co-operation with one another to stretch Russian security forces. In a strange way the international community are helping Russia by not recognising these republics. If major powers like China, EU, and the USA did acknowledge Abkhazia/South Ossetia even in a limited way, this would only strengthen the resolve of radicals from Chechnya, Ingushetti, Dagestan and all hell could break loose.
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Boris 26 August, 2009, 18:20 Jewish media in America slammed Russia on the Georgia conflict. As always they preach a hate campaign against Germany and Russia.
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