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If you googled “Invasion of South Ossetia” on Monday of this week one of the sites near the top of the list was the vitriolic anti Georgian propaganda web site “war.georgia.su” which detailed Georgian atrocities and planned atrocities against the peace loving people of South Ossetia. When I first saw it, the first thing that caught my eye (other than the over the top blood dripping pro anti Georian propaganda) was that the domain name itself. It did not end in “ge” as in Georgia but “su”, the domain name of sites in the former Soviet Union. This made me...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia blamed Georgia on Saturday for an explosion that killed Russian soldiers in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia. A senior Russian peacekeeping officer was among seven soldiers killed on Friday when a car blew up at the Russian peacekeepers' base in Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, the Russian military said. Russia's Interfax news agency quoted South Ossetia's Interior Ministry as saying a total of 11 people had been killed, including civilians. The RIA agency quoted a military spokesman as saying Colonel Ivan Petrik, the Russian peacekeepers' chief of staff, had been killed in his office.

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Washington demanded on Friday that Russia pull its troops out of Georgia "now," but Moscow said it would be another 10 days before the bulk of its force left Georgian soil. In a sign of growing tension between Moscow and the West over the conflict in Georgia, a Russian news agency reported that Russia had temporarily frozen cooperation with the NATO alliance, though there was no immediate confirmation. In some of Washington's toughest comments to date, the White House declared Russia in violation of its commitments to leave the territory of Georgia after routing Georgian forces...

The crimes of georgian's army in S. Ossetia.

TBILISI, Georgia - Georgian troops launched a major military offensive Friday to regain control over the breakaway province of South Ossetia and the president accused Russia, which has close ties to the separatists, of bombing Georgian territory. A Russian official denied the bombing. But Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the Georgian attack will draw retaliation and the Defense Ministry pledged to protect South Ossetians, most of whom have Russian citizenship. An Associated Press reporter saw tanks and other heavy weapons concentrating on the Russian side of the border with South Ossetia and villagers were fleeing into Russia. "I saw...

TBILISI, October 30, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- In his live question-and-answer session with the Russian public on October 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin touched on the long history of the conflict between Georgians and Ossetians. Some Georgian politicians and historians say the Russian leader needs to check his facts. It's not the first time during the recent Moscow-Tbilisi standoff that Putin has evoked the image of Georgian military aggression against the Ossetians. But it may have been the first time he had a chance to do so on live television in front of hundreds of thousands of Russian viewers. "We recall...

Certain analysts feel that Russia's rhetoric regarding the existing conflicts in Georgia has radically changed. Representatives of official Moscow are starting to refuse to acknowledge Georgia's territorial integrity and name the principle of "national self-determination" as an argument in support of this stance. However, at the same time Putin declared that Russia is not going to add any 'new territories' to its current borders. This uncertainty in Russian-Georgian relations may also be caused by the pending Putin-Saakashvili meeting that is to take place in St. Petersburg on June 13. Georgia's territorial integrity was put under question by Russian Foreign Affairs...

The pending appeal of the President of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, to the Russian Federation's Constitutional Court may trigger a destabilizing chain of events in the Caucasus. Kokoity, who is totally dependent on the Kremlin, would not have asked for such a radical step if he wasn't encouraged from the highest level in Moscow. If such developments spin out of control, they can cause a Russian-Georgian military confrontation with unpredictable consequences for the region and the world. My recent meetings in Moscow and Washington indicate that Russian-Georgian relations have deteriorated to the point where some officials in the Kremlin are...

LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Independence for Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo would open up a Pandora's box of separatism and lead to new ethnic conflicts in Europe, the foreign minister of Serbia-Montenegro said on Monday. Kosovo has been a U.N. protectorate since 1999, when 78 days of NATO bombing drove out Serb forces accused of atrocities against civilians while fighting an ethnic Albanian insurgency. Last month, U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari started shuttle diplomacy aimed at reconciling two opposing visions -- the Albanian majority's demands for independence on the basis of self-determination, and Serbia's insistence on sovereignty. Speaking on the sidelines of...

MOSCOW - South Ossetian authorities have issued an ultimatum to Tbilisi saying that if Georgians do not stop firing at Tskhinvali, they will face a military operation held by Ossetian servicemen. This morning Georgians started firing at Ossetia again after almost a daylong ceasefire. Propelled gun shooting damaged an Ossetian hospital. According to recently announced data, 3 people were injured in the incident. Georgians used anti-aircraft guns during today's assault, witnesses say, the First Channel reported. However, Georgians say that 3 people died and 2 were injured after Ossetians fire at Georgian towns, the Rustavi-2 television reported. Georgian Prime Minister...