Word: kremlins
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...This week the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said the Kremlin would station around 3,000 troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by the end of the year. The Russian army has already built three bases in this scrubby mountain territory, and is building a fourth. Tskhinvali, which remains pockmarked and burnt from the five days of heavy fighting despite loans and pledges from Russia that the city would be rebuilt, is now host to a pristine Russian army base surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory...
...Ossetia and into central Georgia. During the war, international human-rights groups accused Georgia of indiscriminately shelling civilian areas and Russia of allowing the ethnic cleansing of Georgian villages in South Ossetia. Though the fighting failed to topple the ailing presidency of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, one of the Kremlin's archenemies, his power inside the country was weakened. Street protests against him have only recently come to an end. The war also strained Russia's relations with the West - relations that U.S. President Barack Obama was trying to reset on his recent visit to Moscow. (See pictures of Obama...
...Ukraine toward Western structures such as the European Union and NATO. Moscow has responded with a series of threats and cuts to gas supplies to try to keep Ukraine in check, along with appeals to the countries' historical and cultural links. The Church, which enjoys strong relations with the Kremlin, is in a unique position to lend support to Moscow's attempts to keep Ukraine close, given its claims to spiritual authority over Ukrainian territory. "Our historical past is here, and our future will to a large extent be decided here," said Kirill on Ukrainian national television on July...
...Kirill toured holy sites across the country, met with political leaders and gave an interview on national television, all with the insistence that his visit had no political agenda. But some observers are skeptical, saying the patriarch was actually in the country to throw spiritual weight behind the Kremlin's attempts to halt Ukraine's move toward Europe and keep it within Russia's sphere of influence. "We've seen more of a Russian state official than a religious figure," says Olexandr Paliy, a historian at the Institute of Foreign Policy at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Diplomatic Academy...
...that his mission is only spiritual. "The idea that independent Ukraine must have an independent Orthodox Church is at the core of the Ukrainian national idea formed in the past decade," he says. "It's a complicating factor that the patriarch lives in Moscow and has ties with the Kremlin." For now, Kirill's Ukrainian critics have their wish: the patriarch is heading back to Moscow on Wednesday, Aug. 5. But Zolotov says there has been talk in Kirill's entourage of making the trip an annual event - so he could soon be back, bringing yet more controversy with...