Word: ossetians
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...lobbed mortars over the border into South Ossetia, Georgia's Foreign Ministry on Monday accused Russia of setting up new border posts inside undisputed Georgian territory. Calling the move "extremely alarming," the Ministry said the incident - which allegedly happened on Sunday near the village of Kveshi, between the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali and Gori, Georgia's second largest city - was an "attempt by the Russian occupants to penetrate into the depth of Georgian territory." (See pictures of the war in Georgia...
...Beijing. While we remained concerned about the Chinese government’s human rights record and its occupation of Tibet, we did not find calls for a boycott of the opening or closing ceremonies to be justified. But the celebratory atmosphere of the Olympics was darkened by the South Ossetian conflict between Russia and Georgia, which reminded many observers all over the world of the potentially pernicious consequences of a resurgent Russia’s military and geopolitical clout.The new conflict in the post-Soviet sphere coincided with a period of relative stability in the heretofore bloody and violent...
...Russian President Dimitri Medvedev has warned that Russia is “not afraid of… a Cold War.” Hopefully Medvedev’s threat relies more on bravado than truth, but this assumption is not a risk worth taking. As the recent South Ossetian conflict indicates, Russia is willing to use force to assert its power in the region...
...student majoring in history and an immigrant from the Caucasus, I was astounded that Brzezinski piled all the blame for the Russia-Georgia conflict on Russia. He should have pointed out that for decades, Ossetians and Abkhazians were discriminated against by the Georgians. When the U.S.S.R. was beginning to collapse, Georgian nationalists began to blockade Ossetian and Abkhazian towns. Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's democratic leader (as Brzezinski calls him) - whose police officers were using force on nonviolent protesters just last November - was goaded by the U.S. and NATO into waking up the Russian bear. It looks as if Georgia will...
...There may be a kernel of truth to both sides. Saakashvili may have thought that his forces could stamp out the South Ossetian defense force in one swift strike without provoking a Russian response; indeed, a mistaken belief that Western allies could intervene diplomatically to restrain Russia might have encouraged him in that calculation. For its part, Russia could well have sought to provoke Georgia into such a response (by urging the South Ossetians to step up attacks on Georgian positions) in order to provide them with a pretext to invade...