Comments on: Did Russia ‘Win’ the Georgia Crisis? Not By a Long Shot: Le Figaro

By: Are modern wars “unwinnable” ? « BBC World Have Your Say

Are modern wars “unwinnable” ? « BBC World Have Your Say — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:49:18 +0000

[...] got me thinking about recent conflicts. Who “won” out of Russia and Georgia ? This article says it wasn’t Russia, while this says it wasn’t Georgia [...]

By: Can anyone tell me-I am concerned to undergraduates if I study in a school in Russia and going to University?

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:12:42 +0000

[...] Did Russia ‘Win’ the Georgia Crisis? Not By a Long Shot: Le Figaro Sphere: Related Content Ask a Question [...]

By: StockBoySF

StockBoySF — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 07:20:00 +0000

I'm not convinced that Russia “lost”. That would mean we knew what they were after… and I don't think their goal in this was Georgia…. I think Russia wanted to remind everyone that they are still a major power in the world, able to cause havoc and invade other countries…. I think Russia is re-exerting themselves.

There may be some short term losses for Russia, but you can bet that before anyone, including the US, does something that might offend Russia, that we will think twice before doing it. We might even decide a particular action is not worth doing if it might raise tensions with Russia- the last thing anyone in the world wants is for the two countries with the most nuclear arms to be in a shooting war with each other.

So I think Russia did win.

By: daveinboca

daveinboca — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:22:55 +0000

Actually, I still believe that Russia's chief obsession with the "Near Abroad" is the Ukraine. If Putin can destabilize Yushchenko, whom he failed to kill by poison, I don't think he cares about the other consequences as much. Russia has always been obsessed with Ukraine, which is why Khrushchev & Brezhnev, both former bosses of the Ukraine in the USSR, rose to the top in the USSR. One of the great cover-ups of history is how much of the western Ukraine wanted to fight Moscow, but when the Nazis treated them as "Untermenschen," they decided to [reluctantly] return to the Motherland.

But even the left-wing of the Social Democrats in Germany is now having second thoughts about Putin, who hired Gerhard Schroeder to carry his water in Deutschland. And Kanzlerin Merkel now realizes that she & Sarkozy are closer than they were before vis-a-vis NATO.

Putin gains in the Ukraine, loses elsewhere including China, stalemate with advantage to NATO in the next round.