On news from Eastern Europe.

[arib]

Dear Vladimir Putin's sock-puppet President Medvedev,

Let me make sure I've got this straight:

Your neighbor (and former Soviet state) Georgia had some of it's provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, attempt to break away in the early 1990s. From what I've read, the Ossetians have a distinct culture and want to try and have a go at running things by themselves. Georgia isn't too chuffed about this, but it seems to me to be a (more-or-less) internal matter, from my way of thinking. It would have been nice if Georgia's neighbors (like you and the rest of the former Soviet Bloc) interceded politically to keep your little part of the world from getting even messier, and maybe help make sure that their cease-fire sticks.

Instead, you offer the South Ossetians Russian citizenship, then invade, effectively splitting Georgia in half, and making the rest of the world wonder if they've been living in a Tom Clancy novel for the last week or so.

I speak for most of us here when I say, "wha?" I realize that I'm just a stupid American who barely understands the decisions his own government makes, but could you kindly explain the situation to me in a way that makes sense?

Thanks,
arib



(I realize I'm probably missing lots of details, but writing it down has actually helped me make some sense of things...)

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Tsar Putin I wants to re-conquer as much of the former empire as he can. This was, as much as anything, a test.

Not the invasion part -- parts of that made sense. But giving Russian citizenship to the folks who broke away from the Georgian government -- that was part of trying to re-form the empire. Then, when the Georgians bombed the breakaway folks, they were bombing Russian citizens which gave Russia the right to invade to protect their citizens.

Then, of course, the Russians started bombing things that weren't involved, because, what the hey, they were there anyway, y'know?

[sorek.livejournal.com]

"been living in a Tom Clancy novel for the last week or so"

Are you sure we haven't been living in a Tom Clancy novel for the last seven years?

Short version, as I understand it from the news programs: Georgia wants to join NATO. Georgia encounters political problems. Russia finds this a convenient excuse to invade and reclaim territory that was effectively under its control for decades and lost when the USSR went belly up in the 90's.

And for some weird reason I keep thinking of a quote from kradical's "Articles of Federation"

"Being protectors of the Remans is something the Klingons take seriously for one reason: It gets the Romulans really mad."

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

For confusion, compare and contrast: afghanistan, chechnya and kosovo....

What is right? If not sure, look at the US Civil War for information about how secession should be handled.

I'm really confused...

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

Well, a part of it is that Georgians, Osetians, Abhasians and the rest of the local populace have been cheerfully killing each other for centuries, excluding a brief break of being collectively owned by the USSR, when the mutual hatred could not be quite so organized. In the meantime, the kill-each-other technology has progressed from horses and swords to bombings, so getting at it again gets a little more dramatic.

In the meantime, Russia does what Russia always does, which is try to claim anything it can. (To be fair, in a lot of cases this is because the predominant population happens to be ethnically Russian, and the country borders are as they are because there was once a political expediency to make it so. Whether that happens to be the case for any particular territory is only slightly relevant).