Word: saakashvili
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...Central Asia for a future TIME story, I asked a senior Western official about the likelihood that the tense Russia-Georgia standoff over South Ossetia could escalate. The source acknowledged that the presence of "hotheads" on both sides - a clear reference to Putin and Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, who, it's true, has not played Tbilisi's hand well. Still, the official said he thought the West was doing a reasonable job trying to keep both sides calm, and would continue...
...have called an end to its military operations in Georgia, but it has already had its way with its uppity little neighbor. The country is traumatized. The people of the capital, Tbilisi, are unlikely to forget the last 24 hours anytime soon. Late last night, even President Mikhail Saakashvili's office expected an attack on the city by morning. Rumors swirled that tanks were on the edge of town and that the capital would be shelled. Saakashvili appeared on the verge of tears in a national address, and later, in the middle of the night...
...countryside, the feelings are less nationalistic. Even before Medvedev's declaration, villagers told me that they think Saakashvili should go. "Russia wants him out so if they see he is gone, they will stop bombing our villagers," says the farmer Beriashvili. Smoke from a bomb billowed from his harvest nearby. Asked whether this would not simply give Russia what it wanted, he replied, "What would you have us do? How can we live like this? We are afraid. We will stay in the forests until this war is over." If it is over, then at least they may be able...
...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...
...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 to save face," contends Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center. The Russian offensive to recapture the city finished the job started by Saakashvili - Tskhinvali lies in ruins...