No more arms for Georgia – Medvedev
Published: 19 January, 2009, 21:09
Edited: 01 October, 2009, 07:00
AFP Photo / Marco Longari
TAGS: Conflict, Military, Georgia, Russia, Ossetian War
Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev has signed a law forbidding the sales of arms from Russia to Georgia.
The Kremlin says the arms embargo will last until December 2011. It makes it illegal to sell, supply or transfer to Georgia from Russian territory or by Russian citizens any kinds of military production, including arms and technology.
Use of Russian railways, water and air transport for military co-operation with Georgia is also outlawed, as is carrying out consultations or rendering assistance.
The decree also says economic sanctions may be imposed on foreign states, organisations delivering military products to Georgia. The Russian government says it will consider restricting or terminating military, technical and economic cooperation with these states and organisations. Providing weaponry to Georgia, it adds, may provoke regional instability.
Russia had earlier tried to bring an international embargo on military supplies to Georgia to prevent a new war, but officials say the initiative was not widely supported abroad.
Georgia’s reaction
Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the decree “inadequate”. Georgian military experts believe it will influence illegal arms supplies. Military expert Amiran Salukvadze says Georgia has not received arms directly from Russia for a long time.
Other military experts say Russia has decided “to follow the lead of the USA when it declared an arms embargo for different countries and brought sanctions against companies which broke the embargo”. They say Russia had also asked Ukraine and Israel to stop supplying arms to Georgia.
Georgia claims the decree will not effect its army as Russian arms that are already being used will soon be replaced by European hardware.
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@J.Wyllie, the laugh is on all of us. Russia is making a good profit from selling its military technology around the world, and some of it, especially defensive, is superior on the market. But that is to talk about irrelevancies. The problem is that the global security is falling apart. Instead of sticking with the UN SC resolution mechanisms, US and Europe have taken a decidedly opposite path. US first started to impose its domestic legislation on international affairs. After a while, most citizens were unable to distinguish between the international law and internationally agreed upon sanctions, and the purely domestic laws. Domestic laws are often result of lobby efforts, but the results for global security are grave. If every country decides to impose sanctions on another country, and apply them to all other countries that are not complying, you have a private-based set of "international regulations". The proliferation of these, as is the case with Iran, creates an unsustainable international order. Half private, half international --- it will not survive. What Russia is doing is the testament that the global security is getting worse, not better. It proves that West is not interested in the peace in Caucasus, but just the opposite, the arming of Georgia which supplies half the weaponry to terrorists across Caucasus. The sale of Russian arms is the prerogative of domestic law. But what has crept into it, is the internationalization of that law. Russia will be able to unilaterally punish those countries that supply Georgia with weapons. That can take form of various retaliatory moves in trade or foreign policy. Weakening of the international law is our loss. The fact that Russia decided to emulate this practice will further hurt what is left of the international law.