Word: russian
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Emerging from behind the cover of a tree and thick bushes, the blunt nose of a Russian eight-wheeled armored personnel carrier juts into the dirt road. In the shade, five soldiers - Special Forces and border guards - sit bored, smoking cigarettes near a burned-out campfire. A sixth lulls in the vehicle, blasting techno dance music. "We are prepared for the Georgians if they come. We don't think they'll start anything, but if they do, we're ready for them," says a border guard, standing in grimy fatigues with a worn Kalashnikov over his shoulder...
...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...
...between Moscow and Tbilisi over the fate of the breakaway republic and that of Abkhazia, another republic that had declared independence from Georgia following wars in the early 1990s. Hours after the attack, Russia responded with what the West condemned as a "disproportionate" use of force. Within five days, Russian forces had driven Georgian troops out of South 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...
...loans. Since the end of the war, 240 unarmed European Union monitors have been patrolling the border on the Georgian side to ensure that the terms of the cease-fire brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy are not broken. But they have not been given access to the Russian-patrolled South Ossetian side of the border and so cannot confirm the reported provocations or back up any of the accusations Russia and Georgia are leveling at each other. (See pictures of the Russians in Ossetia...
...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 not be new aggression from Georgia," then the situation may have already deteriorated...