andriejj wrote:Russian soldiers burned down villages, commited rapes and murders. If that's not banditism, then I don't know what is.
Says who, Mikheil Saakashvili? The same fellow who was whining about how Gori was captured and Russians were encircling Tblisi while at the same time Reuter's reporters in the area were reporting Gori as being totally deserted with nobody, not even Russians, in sight? The same guy who neglects to mention the hundreds or thousands of civilians his own forces butchered (note: It HAS, on the other hand, been confirmed that areas in S. Ossetia are wrecked by Georgian attacks. For example, Georgian Grad rocket hit confirmed on a hospital.) while complaining about imageanary Russian assaults? The same guy who's playing the generic anti-fascist card to the point where even American authorities admit confusion of some claims?
I've been following this thing from the begining, and it seems like the only areas where Russians actually moved into Georgia proper were mostly evacuated regions around Abkhazia. Mikheil Saakashvili has spouted so much crap at this point that he accuses Russia of rape and murder, Russia was probably giving children candy. Why aren't people accusing Georgia of the same stuff by the way, given that there's actually evidence that they're guilty?
How do I put this? Both sides are accusing the other of murdering large quantities of civilians, but Georgia is the only of the two nations that actually mounted a strategic assault on an unevacuated civilian area.
At this point, Georgia's accusations are almost laughable (But not, because the situation sucks). Georgia has even claimed that Russia helped expell 300,000 ethnic Georgians from the seperatist regions. Evidently Georgia doesn't understand that you can't expell more people than there are. Hint: Between the two regions, there's around 80,000 ethnic Georgians.
edit: Looking back on what I said, I guess I change my mind on the Kosovo matter. Now that I think about it, the whole deal with Kosovo
was an 8-years-after-the-fact thing that wouldn't have been an issue if the Kosovar Albanians hadn't randomly started getting western urging to complain a lot.
I'm not sure about the Georgian seperatists though, really. Georgia is claiming to be all westernized and natoing and then pulls this crap 17 years after the Soviet Union fell; Serbia still had stuff to get over in '99, and it did. Georgia got over stuff but then dove back into having issues while trying to be awesome, which makes it a lot more awkward. At the very least, control over their breakaway regions should be internationally recognized as suspended and managed by an international body until a more diplomatic means of national reintegration could be made after thigs cool down (ie, not shooting up cities and demanding submission).