Word: georgias
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...Ready, and waiting. Georgia and Russia have traded increasingly belligerent accusations against the other as the anniversary of last year's five-day war has approached in recent weeks; these soldiers, sent by Moscow to guard the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, are on the front line of that war of words. A tour of towns north of the border shows just dependent South Ossetians are on the Russians, and how much this small region, ostensibly independent, has actually become a de facto Russian province. (See pictures of the war in Georgia...
...Down a heavily potholed road, in some places splashed by mountain streams, the abandoned village of Eredvi comes into view. Populated by ethnic Georgians before the 2008 war, the village is now empty. Every house has been demolished and the villagers have all fled to Georgia. Plants grow between the heaps of bricks and stone. The school, which had been recently repaired before the war, today stands faded pink and windowless. Looters, whom locals claim do not exist, have stripped the place - even digging the wiring out of the walls. They have taken everything but the Georgian-language textbooks...
...Teiran Bestayev, 50, a resident of the neighboring Ossetian village of Dmenisi is unrepentant. "Now we are over here and they are over there," he says, waving vaguely towards Gori, Georgia's second largest city, which lies just a few dozen miles to the south down the broad valley below. "They have Georgia and we have South Ossetia and that's how it should be." (Read: "One Year On, Could Russia and Georgia Fight Another...
...would probably agree. Before the war, says Bestayev, local villagers had to present passports and undergo searches when they traveled through Eredvi on the way to the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali about six miles (9.7 km) away. "Maybe those idiots will start shooting again," he said, again motioning towards Georgia, "but that would be their last shot. Our side of the border is much stronger...
...Whether or not it turns out to be justified, Russia and Georgia's blame game could have tragic consequences. During his recent visit to Tbilisi, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden stressed that "there is no military option to [South Ossetia and Abkhazia's] reintegration [into Georgia]," and according to Georgian National Security Council Secretary Eka Tkeshelashvili, Biden told him that the U.S. is now carrying out "preventive diplomacy so the situation does not deteriorate." But if what Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Karasin said on Wednesday is true and "no one can give us any guarantee that there will...