The Georgia-Russia conflict from other POVs

The Eurasia Daily Monitor by the Jamestown Foundation provides translation and a rough summary of news in Asia and in particular, the countries of the former Soviet Union from primary news sources in those countries. It seems that the Georgia-Russia conflict may not be the overwhelming, super-strategic move that some neo-cons have named it.

Pavel Baev summarizes it this way:

Moscow was disconcertingly taken by surprise with the sharp escalation of hostilities in South Ossetia last Friday. The most apparent part of the problem was the lack of leadership, as President Dmitry Medvedev departed to a Volga resort and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went to Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The greater problem was the serious military and political miscalculations that had resulted in the apparently chaotic emergency decision-making (Kommersant, August 9; Ezhednevny zhurnal, August 8).

It is hard to blame the military for missing the Georgian preparations for the large-scale offensive, since the command of the Armed Forces had been thoroughly reshuffled: The Chief of the General Staff was replaced in early June, his first deputy (the head of the Main Operational Department) was fired in early July and not replaced, and the commander of the Ground Forces was replaced in the first days of August (Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 5).

The main blunder, however, was political, as the Kremlin seriously overestimated its ability to dominate the situation in the conflict zone. The large-scale military exercises conducted across the North Caucasus in July were supposed to demonstrate Russia's superiority in projecting power (Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 18). In parallel, the withdrawal of the railway troops from Abkhazia in early August symbolized Moscow's flexibility and responsiveness to the peace proposals advanced by Germany (Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 8).

Putin was confident that his performance at the NATO Bucharest summit had effectively blocked Georgia's Atlantic aspirations; several stern "warnings" should have ensured that Georgia would not dare make any pro-active move. Surprise was so complete that Putin, according to those who saw him in Beijing, was pale with barely controlled rage, which he tried to convey to U.S. President George Bush and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev (Moscow echo, August 8).

As GrandMoffTexan noted, "there's a very different narrative going on here.  Is it possible that Russia is not, like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, implacable and calculating and trying to send us a message with every tick and grimace?"

The Georgian provocation seems to have had an Ossetian provocation.  Here's an article from the day before the Russians invaded Georgia:  

The latest outbreak of hostilities began on July 31 after two roadside bombs hit a Georgian police Toyota SUV near the Georgian village of Eredvi. Six Georgian policemen were wounded (Interfax, August 1). Russian peacekeepers, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, discovered that the bombs were made out of 122 mm artillery shells (www.mil.ru, August 2). The road leading to Eredvi was built by the Georgians to bypass Ossetian roadblocks near the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. Last November I traveled that road in a similar Toyota to visit the Georgian-controlled part of South Ossetia. This road has been a thorn in the side of the Ossetian separatists for some time. On July 4 a car with the pro-Georgian leader of South Ossetia Dmitry Sanakoyev, whom the separatists consider a renegade, was hit by a roadside bomb and shot at on the same road in almost the same spot. Three bodyguards were wounded, but Sanakoyev was unhurt. A surge of tension followed the attack (RIA-Novosti, July 4; Kommersant, August 4).

The roadside bomb attack on July 31 was followed the next day by bloody clashes. Both sides accused the other of initiating the fighting. The Ossetians admitted six dead and 15 wounded, many hit by sniper fire. The Georgians admitted nine wounded. Both sides accused the other of using mortar fire. The Ossetians announced that 29 Georgian solders had been killed but did not substantiate the claim (RIA-Novosti, August 4). The Ossetians began an evacuation of women and children to North Ossetia (a Russian autonomous republic), called for volunteers from the North Caucasus to join the fight against Georgia, and threatened to attack Georgian cities and to cleanse the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia. The South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity claimed that Georgians living in South Ossetia were begging to be "liberated" from the forces of the regime in Tbilisi (RIA-Novosti, August 2, 3, and 4).

Kokoity has announced that some 300 volunteers have arrived in South Ossetia to fight the Georgians and that more are coming (www.newsru.com, August 5). Most of the "volunteers" seem to be South Ossetians that were serving in police and other militarized formations in North Ossetia and were sent south as reinforcements. Kokoity has ordered that these "volunteers" be integrated into the South Ossetian Interior Ministry forces (RIA-Novosti, August 6). Yesterday the Ossetians were reporting fierce battles with Georgian forces, while Georgian authorities and Russian peacekeepers reported only shooting incidents in which no one was injured (Interfax, August 6).

The Ossetian authorities have announced the cancellation of a planned meeting with the Georgian side in Tskhinvali on August 7, while the Russian Foreign Ministry said that it believed the meeting had to go ahead (RIA-Novosti, August 6). Russian peacekeepers say that after the initial flare up of fighting on August 1, the situation in South Ossetia has somewhat calmed. The Ossetians insist that it is getting worse (Interfax, August 6). High-ranking Russian officials, including President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, have remained silent about the conflict in South Ossetia.

So how much of this nuance have you gleaned from the American media types?

Not much, I'll bet.

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