Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2060412/posts
Russia orders end to operation after bombing of media centre
Times Online ^ | August 12, 2008
Posted on August 12, 2008 3:03:09 AM PDT by Schnucki
Russian warplanes bombed the Georgian city of Gori overnight, hitting a media centre and killing a Dutch television journalist who was in the city to cover the invasion.
At least four other people were killed in the bombardment, which began as the Georgian army and most of the city’s remaining inhabitants fled Gori in disarray believing that Russian troops were about to take the town.
Meanwhile, Georgian authorities said that Russian fighter jets had once again attempted to bomb a strategic oil pipeline, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, which carries fuel from the Caspian Sea to Europe via Georgia.
Georgia fears that the Russian army is now preparing to march on the Georgian capital Tbilisi and topple the government of President Mikhail Saakashvili. An explosion was heard in Tbilisi this morning, heightening fears that Russian MiG fighter jets were about to bomb the city.
Russia dismisses this, saying that the thousands of troops, tanks and artillery that it has poured into Georgia’s two breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the last few days, and the incursions that they have made into Georgian sovereign territory around them, are merely intended to prevent Georgia from attacking South Ossetia again.
This morning Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian President, appeared to have ordered a halt to the military operation.
Mr Medvedev said that Russia’s military had punished Georgia enough for its attack last week on South Ossetia. “The security of our peacekeepers and civilians has been restored,” Mr Medvedev said. “The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses. Its military has been disorganised.”
The Russian President said that he had, however, ordered the Russian military to continue to defend itself, and to quell any signs of Georgian resistance.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
The horror. They disorganized the Georgian military. More like the Georgians have regrouped into a tenable defensible position around the southern Caucasus range. Obviously the Russian planners had calculated that the Georgian army would be destroyed before it could reach that defensible position.
Gori is the birthplace of Stalin.
And Gori still has Stalin's birthhome as a museum.
If Gori is indeed being bombed, this tells me Russia's concerns are not ideologic but economic. Elsewhere, I read this morning that Russian President Medvedev, in listing his immediate demands in exchange for a cease fire has said: "an end to Georgia’s NATO aspirations and Europe being cut off from the Caspian oil and gas reserves".
The latter suggests bombing the pipeline is being held like a hammer in the negotiations. That being said; should Russia bomb the pipeline, a pipeline which is serving many now, Russia further indebts itself on multiple levels.