Word: russian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...GEORGIA 2. ARMENIA 3. AZERBAIJAN A vital region for the West, which has high hopes for an oil pipeline through Azerbaijan. George W. Bush visited ally Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia in 2005. Tiny Armenia, which borders Turkey and Iran, readily accepts Russian protection...
...Georgia DISPATCH BURNING ANGER After a brief pause, fires have started again in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, as Ossetian villagers burn and pillage homes belonging to ethnic Georgian residents. "They did this because they don't want us to come back," says Iosif Zadashvili, who claims Russian soldiers stood by while Ossetian irregulars beat him in the courtyard of his home. With many villages reduced to burned-out shells, looters were seen hauling off TVs, refrigerators and other household appliances. On the road to the Russian border, graffiti on the side of a building read THANK YOU, RUSSIA...
...Russians fail to notice. "Israel armed the Georgian army," grumbled General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of staff of the Russian military, at a press conference in Moscow earlier this week. An Israeli paper had, last weekend, quoted an unnamed official warning that Israel needed "to be very careful and sensitive these days. The Russians are selling many arms to Iran and Syria, and there is no need to offer them an excuse to sell even more advanced weapons." As if on cue, on Wednesday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Moscow hoping to persuade Russia to sell him sophisticated...
...Russians were piqued by Israel's military trade with Georgia even before the latest outbreak of hostilities - Moscow expressed its annoyance over the pilotless drones supplied by an Israeli company to the Georgians, three of which were downed by Russian aircraft over South Ossetia in recent months. Obviously mindful of the need to avoid provoking Russia, Israel declared off-limits certain weapons systems the Georgians had asked for, such as Merkava tanks and advanced anti-aircraft systems. "We have turned down many requests involving arms sales to Georgia, and the ones that have been approved have been duly scrutinized...
Israel's strategic priority now is countering the threat it sees in Iran's nuclear program, and on that front, Russian cooperation is essential. If the Israelis are to achieve their objective of forcing Iran to end uranium enrichment through diplomatic coercion, they will need Russian support for escalating U.N. sanctions - a course of action for which Russia has thus far shown little enthusiasm. And if Israel were to opt for trying to destroy Tehran's nuclear facilities through a series of air strikes, then the presence of the sophisticated Russian S-300 missile system in Iran would considerably raise...