Word: abkhazia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hand in non-NATO member countries, where the alliance is less willing to intervene directly. It has been suggested that last year’s war between Russia and Georgia, which resulted in Russia’s recognition of the independence of the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, was a retaliation against U.S. support of Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO membership bids. And Russian President Dmitri Medvedev apparently has no qualms about stating his displeasure about Ukraine’s overtures toward Western Europe...
...lasted five days, but the danger continues. Russia, which has recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states (only Nicaragua and Venezuela have followed suit), has evicted all international monitors from the territories and is most likely arming those areas to the teeth. Georgia's new Defense Minister, Bacho Akhalaia, told me the Georgian army will "stay calm." But the military is rebuilding. An infantry battalion will deploy to Afghanistan in January under the command of U.S. Marines, and it will return, as veterans did from a deployment in Iraq, with more experience and confidence for the next engagement. Though...
...Union blaming both Russia and Georgia for the conflict was about to be released, but word had already leaked that the report would accuse Georgia of firing the first shots. The war all but ended Saakashvili's dreams of unifying Georgia with the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - nearly a fifth of its territory - and the report could possibly damage his other great project: convincing the West that Georgia is a reliable military and economic ally...
...Black Sea coast at Anaklia Bay. Saakashvili, who is sometimes swept away by his own optimism, met several leading Spanish architects on the beach to discuss developing a resort nearly 4 miles (6 km) long that would lead right up to the border with the breakaway republic of Abkhazia. The area may have natural potential - "The water's like boiled milk," an official told me approvingly - but Saakashvili seemed to be ignoring the obvious. If war breaks out again, the Russian army will rumble first through Anaklia, bombing and burning, just as it did last year...
...Saakashvili's earliest political promises in 2004 was to get Abkhazia and South Ossetia back in Georgia's fold. Both territories had turned to Russia for protection after a bloody civil war in the early 1990s, however, and the Kremlin had little incentive to broker a peace. Instead, it began to use unrest there to undermine Saakashvili's courtship of NATO, which he wanted Georgia to join. Saakashvili told me that from the outset, any talk he had with then Russian President Vladimir Putin on the breakaway territories was met with warnings about his relationship to the West: "The first...