THE CAPITAL OF SOUTH OSSETIA IS WIPED OFF THE POLITICAL MAP

In any community – a school class, a workshop, an army unit or a prison cell – laymen are tested for strength. Tests may be different: a special procedure of "initiation", a provocation, a physical contest or psychological pressure. In the same way, a goalkeeper in a soccer game is tested at the start with long-distance and precarious blows. Global policy follows similar rules.

During recent decades, the West has been systematically testing Moscow leaders for strength. Yury Andropov was tested by a South Korean aircraft illegitimately entering the air territory of the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev's personal psychological and political reaction was tested by German pilot Matthias Rust who landed his sports plane on the Red Square in Moscow. Boris Yeltsin was tested with the first Chechen war. A multitude of tests were invented for Vladimir Putin, including the military provocation in Dagestan, explosions in Moscow houses, and the capture of a school by a group of terrorists in Beslan, North Ossetia. However, Putin disappointed the tough guys, displaying strength in most precarious situations and moreover, consolidating his domestic popularity each time when the attempts to test him obviously failed.

Regardless from Putin's choice of successor, the plan of Tbilisi's assault on South Ossetia was prepared in advance. The successor was going to be humiliated, bullied and ridiculed before the whole world. His weakness was supposed to be demonstrated to Russia’s rivals and allies, as well as to the Russian people.

This article is utter tripe. Clearly Soviet propaganda.

the plan of Tbilisi's assault on South Ossetia was prepared in advance.

From another article, different source that gives background on the leadership of "seperatist" S. Ossetia. Given the following info and Russia having handed out passports to all the Ossetian folk to be able to claim they are defending Russian citizens, I think the above quote from this article is clearly laughable.

there is no way the regime in South Ossetia can be in any sense called "separatist." Who there is a separatist? The head of the local KGB, Anatoly Baranov, used to head the Federal Security Service (FSB) in the Russian Republic of Mordovia. The head of the South Ossetian Interior Ministry, Mikhail Mindzayev, served in the Interior Ministry of Russia's North Ossetia. The South Ossetian "defense minister," Vasily Lunev, used to be military commissar in Perm Oblast, and the secretary of South Ossetia's Security Council, Anatoly Barankevich, is a former deputy military commissar of Stavropol Krai. So who exactly is a separatist in this government? South Ossetian "prime minister" Yury Morozov?

However, alas, I also cannot say this regime is "pro-Russian." On the contrary, all the recent actions of Eduard Kokoity, the leader of the breakaway South Ossetian government, have run counter to the interests of Russia in the Caucasus -- beginning with his embarrassing Russia in the eyes of the international community and ending with his ratcheting up the tensions in the very region where Russia might begin to come undone. South Ossetia is not a territory, not a country, not a regime. It is a joint venture of siloviki generals and Ossetian bandits for making money in a conflict with Georgia. For me, the most surprising thing in this entire story is the complete lack of any strategic goals on the part of the South Ossetians.

South Ossetia Crisis Could Be Russia's Chance to defeat Siloviki

Setting aside the author's point that this would be a good opportunity to throw the Siloviki to the dogs, this author delineates a clear picture of what South Ossetia is and is not.

The excuse to goad Georgia into war by constantly shelling Georgian villages surrounding Tskhinvali from a military outpost that is located so near the civilian population that it makes killing civilians unavoidable. As the author notes, all the "peacekeepers", S. Ossetians need do is move the post a couple hundred meters away.

It was the test. The test of Anti-aircraft system. Since there was american intellegence airplane. It recorded the electronic emittions and conversations. After all who recorded those fighter pilot conversation. Whole matter was good for the intellegence. They got it a lot.

So the shootdown was justified? Is that what you are saying?

You say in post #7 that you don't agree with them (the far right politicals in Russia) and yet here you are spouting exactly the same stuff as they do.

I cannot believe the whiny paranoia in this article.

Russia is now, and always has been, a vicious bully. And like all bullies, it insists that its victims provoked it.

A pattern we see in the so-called “Tskhinvali massacre”. The South Ossetian military hide in the middle of Tskhinvali and shell Georgian settlements. When the Georgians fire back, some of their shells hit civilians - because the SO military bases are firing from the middle of a city.

This is a fundamental principle of terrorists the world over. You set up fire-bases in civilian areas and blaze away. When your enemy fires back you gleefully parade the bodies of your own children in front of the cameras. This shameful and immoral tactic has been christened “Muslim Body Armor” here on FR - and now has been taken up by the Ossetian separatists and their Russian puppet-masters.

The Russians invented Arafat, and have re-used the concept of the Palestinian refugee camps in South Ossetia. The people there are not free civilians in the usual sense of the word: they are militarized refugees, body armor for a cowardly and vicious aggressor.

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