Word: russianize
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...independence. Russia has long sought to re-establish influence in Georgia and prevent it from joining NATO (a move Russia sees as part of a hostile encirclement by the West), and also to prevent the oil pumped to Turkey from Azerbaijan and elsewhere in Central Asia from bypassing Russian control. Georgia claims that Russian planes have in recent days bombed the strategically important oil pipeline that transits Georgia. The pipeline actually had been inoperative since Aug. 6 as a result of a fire in its Turkish segment, and Azerbaijan instead kept supplying oil through two Georgian ports. As these ports...
...Fighting broke out late last Thursday after Georgia sent its military to reclaim control of the territory, which has enjoyed de facto autonomy under Russian protection since 1992, and Russia launched its own offensive against Georgian forces. And as of Sunday, it appeared that both Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had painted themselves into a corner. The Russians face the dilemma over how far to push their "punishment" of Georgia for its attack on South Ossetia; the Georgian leadership faces the reality that the stated objective of its military operation - to recapture the breakaway region...
...When Saakashvili unleashed a massive artillery-and-rocket barrage on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali last Thursday night, the Russian response was all too predictable: having jealously guarded the territory's autonomy from Georgia as a point of leverage against Tbilisi's desire to join NATO, Moscow launched an offensive of its own, fighting Georgian forces inside South Ossetia and bombing cities inside Georgia proper. Meanwhile, separatist forces in Abkhazia, another Moscow-backed separatist Georgian province, opened a second front against Georgian forces, while Russia's Back Sea Fleet sailed from its base in Ukraine to impose a naval...
...territories broke away from Georgia for the same ethnic-nationalist reasons that Chechnya wanted out of Russia. But while Moscow relentlessly and bloodily suppressed Chechnya's secessionists, it fully supported their Ossetian and Abkhazian counterparts as a tool against Georgia's tilt toward the West. Moscow issued Russian citizenship to over 90% of the population of both entities and deployed "peacekeeping" forces sympathetic to the separatists to police the de facto lines of secession. So when Saakashvili turned his artillery on Tskhinvali, killing hundreds of civilians and over a dozen Russian peacekeepers, "Russia had to move in, if only...
...Georgia joining NATO anytime soon. (The carnage of recent days will probably reinforce the reluctance of European NATO members to induct Georgia as a member, despite strong U.S. support for Georgian membership.) And by extending its offensive into Georgia - dozens of civilians are reported to have been killed in Russian air strikes on Georgian cities - Moscow has also fired a warning shot at Ukraine, another former Soviet territory that shares Georgia's ambition to join NATO...