Word: tskhinvali
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Dates: during 2008-2008
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Despite the occasional crack and pop of small arms fire, a quiet of sorts has finally descended on Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway republic of South Ossetia. On Thursday, bodies still lay in the streets as a small-scale cleanup of the destruction began...
...while the danger has receded, the Russian military has clamped down on coverage of the conflict by American reporters and photographers, making it impossible to verify reports from the organization Human Rights Watch that ethnic Georgian villages just outside of Tskhinvali were being systematically burned and looted...
...heavily managed media tour into Tskhinvali on Thursday, the army forced photographers to stay inside locked armored personnel carriers. Yet on Tuesday, before Human Rights Watch issued its report, it allowed photographers to stand with their torsos outside the vehicle to see burning buildings and irregular fighters carting away home appliances. On the ride out of the city on Thursday, commanders allowed a Russian TV reporter to sit outside the vehicle - even while they claimed to fear snipers - while they pushed me roughly back into the vehicle when I tried to stick my head...
That's one of the reasons men continue to trudge into the recruitment center as the morning unfolds. "Hopefully I will go to serve tomorrow," says Ramaz Kuchiev, 27, who has arrived from Mazdok, a city in North Ossetia. "Probably we will go to Tskhinvali. There is a group of 50 of us that are prepared to serve right now." Kuchiev has amber eyes and a calm but intense demeanor. He served his two years in the Russian army at a base near Moscow. Now he is unemployed; he is wearing a bright red shirt and pointy black shoes...
...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...