“The Idea that There is a Ceasefire is Ridiculous” (Updated)
The Guardian’s correspondent reports on the rampaging of irregulars and the advance of Russian tanks and soldiers (allegedly there to “keep peace”). Here’s peace for you:
Villages in Georgia were being burned and looted as Russian tanks and soldiers followed by “irregulars” advanced from the breakaway province of South Ossetia, eyewitnesses said today.
“People are fleeing, there is a mood of absolute panic. The idea there is a ceasefire is ridiculous,” Luke Harding, the Guardian’s correspondent, said….
Harding, watching villages near Gori burn, said witnesses had told him Russian military, including at least 25 tanks, had moved from the Russian-controlled South Ossetia into the villages.
“They asked villagers to hang white flags or handkerchiefs outside their houses if they did not want to be shot, they say.”
The tanks had passed through the village of Rekha at about 11.20am local time. “Behind them (say eyewitnesses) is a whole column of irregulars who locals say are Chechens, Cossacks and Ossetians.
“Eyewitnesses say they are looting, killing and burning. These irregulars have killed three people and set fire to villages. They have been taking away young boys and girls,” said Harding, watching smoke rise from another village, Karaleti. (emphasis added)
Agent-France Presse reports:
Russian armoured vehicles patrolled Gori, the flashpoint Georgian town between the capital and South Ossetia, the breakaway region at the centre of the conflict.
Hundreds of South Ossetian rebels with some Russian army personnel went house-to-house in villages near Gori. They set houses ablaze and looted buildings, witnesses said.
The body of a man, his mouth caked with blood, lay in a street in the village of Dzardzanis and nearby the body of a bearded man could be seen crushed under an overturned mini-van, an AFP journalist reported.
The Human Rights Watch group said its researchers in South Ossetia had on Tuesday “witnessed terrifying scenes of destruction in four villages that used to be populated exclusively by ethnic Georgians.”
About 60 tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles were seen on the road leading east from Gori to the capital. An AFP reporter saw Russian troops shouting: “Tbilisi, Tbilisi” but their destination was unclear. (AFP)
I’ll hazard a guess. Tbilisi?
Even the Russian news media doesn’t think it’s over, though they blame the Georgians.
There was considerable scepticism among Russian newspapers about whether the conflict was really over.
Even as Medvedev announced an end to the Russian operation “it immediately became clear that in fact the confrontation was hardly finished,” wrote the daily Kommersant.
“It is too early to reach unequivocal conclusions about whether the agreement reached by Medvedev and Sarkozy will really put an end to military actions in South Ossetia,” wrote the popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“Saakashvili is characterised by his unpredictability and a lack of willingness to respect agreements,” it added. (AFP)
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5 Responses to ““The Idea that There is a Ceasefire is Ridiculous” (Updated)”
Damozel,
Over the years, how much have you paid attention to the conflicts in the former Soviet states?
Did you even know where Georgia was before last week?
I am sorry to be snippy, but Russia and Putin have tried to undermine
the democratically elected governments of these countries for years. I understand that you haven't noticed, but I have to question your recent posts on this blog.
Have you been to these countries, do you understand the concerns of the citizens of these countries?
Ask the people of the Ukraine about Russian meddling.
This is not about right or left, this is about Freedom.
If you do not understand that, then please just remain silent.
cfpete
As an Entry Strategist for Amoco in the Caucasus, I visited Azerbaijan a dozen times & helped set up the agreement between Amoco/BP & Azerbaijan/Georgia/Turkey for the Baku to Ceyhan [pronounced Jay-han] terminal in the Med. Though I didn't visit Georgia, the Georgian & Azeri governments were well aware of Russian opposition to the pipeline, which the Clinton Administration supported 100% [I visited the NSC officers in the OEOB a dozen times coordinating with Clinton staffers, as did some of my Amoco buddies].
This was back in the mid-nineties, when Yeltsin was showing a different face to the world, and Putin was an ex-KGB colonel who formerly ran East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yeltsin was a relatively sane Russian—Putin has reverted to Stalinist [and czarist before him] genetic templates.
The reason Putin is threatening Georgia [and Ukraine & Azerbaijan inferentially] is to prevent the looping of the pipeline with Kazakh crude & Turkmeni gas [Turkmenistan has the third richest NG reserves in the world] and giving both those countries an alternate route out of their landlocked reserves. Nowadays, Kazakhs & Turkmen are forced to export through Russia, which takes a huge cut and also controls the other end of the faucet. Putin's recent near-miss bombings of the pipeline send the message to oil investors not to invest another $10 billion or so to loop the pipeline to double its crude output & export trillions of cu ft of natural gas from Turkmenistan.
Read Marshall Goldman's Petrostate to get the big picture.
Putin hates NATO & hates the independence of Ukraine, which is why he poisoned the present President before the election campaign. [As he poisons ex-KGB agents who get out of line--Putin learned that from Stalin who learned it from Georgian clan feuds who picked it up from the Persians who ruled Georgia during the Safavid Dynasty, if you care to look it up. The Persians beat the Italians in the poison Guinness record.] Read Simon Montefiori's two books on Stalln for details.
Putin would poison anyone in his range, and I call him Vlad The Empoisoner. He wants to succeed Stalin, and hits Stalin's birthplace with bombs & incendiaries to erase the former world champion of Russian terror.
cfpete
I'm not sure why Damozel should remain silent just because she doesn't “understand” everything about the situation. I mean, people spend years studying these areas to become “experts”, and even then situations remain complicated. As Damozel has stated in nearly every post about this war, there is a lack of reliable information coming out of the war zone and without accurate information, it is difficult to really say exactly who is at fault for what.
Clearly the Russians have a long history of interfering with their neighbors. I don't think that is a coincidence that nearly all of the former Soviet republics have a deep-seated mistrust (bordering on hatred) of the Russians. The Baltics (maybe the most anti-russian), Poland and Ukraine have all been very vocal denouncers of the Russians in this case and I think they are the experts on these issues (to an extent). That being said, just because the Russians are untrustworthy, that doesn't mean that the Georgians are necessarily perfect angels in this war.
Damozel, I've enjoyed your posts on this topic very much. Considering that much of the MSM is still focused on trivial issues like Edwards and constant over-analysis of the veep-stakes, I've appreciated having updates and links to foreign media stories on this topic. Keep the posts coming!
CfPete.
Here's a suggestion. Dial back the judgmental tone. Who are you to decide that I shouldn't comment? There's always more than one perspective on an issue. And I am learning more every day.
I appreciate that you feel strongly about the Georgians and your comments have been very helpful.
I am doing the best I can to address what's happening. It's true I am looking at as many sources and opinions as I can, not just the ones who agree with you.
But when you called me out yesterday for being insufficiently sympathetic to Georgia, I listened to what you said and responded accordingly (in an earlier post.)
Blogging is discussion. I've not held myself out as an expert—quite the reverse. But I've delved into multiple sources and have organized information culled from them so that others can read and draw their own conclusions.
Yes, I've known about Russia's efforts undermining these regimes. Yes, I knew some of the history. But not as much as you. That is why I was grateful for your (first) comments.
I wrote (on Monday) that I have no trust in Russia or its motives. But that doesn't mean that I am prepared to say that between these groups—Georgia and its separatist enclaves—-I know which has behaved worse over the last century and before. I don't. It looks as if there are victims and blame on all sides.
What concerns me is the same thing that always concerns me—-cruelty to human beings. Looks to me as if there has been some of that on all sides as well.
If so, then I'm certainly not going to argue that because the Abkhazi behaved badly in the Nineties, it's fine for the Georgians to behave similarly now (if in fact they did).
I realize that the Russians have been doing their all to exacerbate the situation in the separatist regions and have intervened financially and militarily there now and in the past, and wrote to this effect in my very lengthy first post two or three days back.
But as APR says, sometimes victims ARE a little to blame i.e., when a kid pokes a hungry bear with a sharp stick.
Thank you, APR, by the way.
What we can understand is that Russia's attitude to hersemf and the natins that surround her is partly our fault. When the USSR was dissolved in 1991, the west, and the fault can be laid at Washington’s door, failed to welcome Russia into the community of nations. The attitude was completely triumphalist – public gloating from members of the Bush (father) administration, rejoicing that “We won the Cold War. Godless Communism is dead.” Boris Yeltsin offered Russia as a partner in the community of nations, especially in his speech to Congress during his first Washington visit, but he was largely ignored. Winston Churchill’s dictum that one should be magnanimous in victory obviously meant nothing to Washington, and instead they concentrated in humiliating Russia under Yeltsin. And the result was that we got Putin, complete with his ex-KGB mindset and old fashioned belief that Russia has a manifest destiny to get her own way in western Asia.