not aware of any troop concentrations by Georgia in or near South Ossetia<\/a>‘. Two days later, Georgia ordered 7.500 men, tanks and heavy artillery in action.<\/p>\n… Russia has suffered a serious defeat at the SCO meeting in Dushanbe. Not only did it not get any endorsement for its unilateral recognition of Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s independence, but was left devoid of any substantial endorsement of its military operations and posture in Georgia. The final communique has just approved of Russia’s stabilization role in the Caucasus region in very vague terms. What had me expecting Russia not to endorse the indepependence of the break-away region’s independence – Russia’s international isolation –\u00a0 has materialized but not kept Russia from doing it in the first place.<\/p>\n
… France yesterday once more demonstrated major flaws in handling the ‘Russia crisis’. Pending accord among major members of the EU, Bernard Kouchner publicly mentioned possible sanctions on Russia only to backtrack hours later. What a disastrous signal of internal ruptures. This in itself dealt a blow to the EU’s effort to send a tough message to the Russians. Weak, divided and inconclusive without any ‘weapons’ at hand….<\/p>\n
… Russia is sending its sole aircraft carrier ‘Admiral Kuznetsov’ to the Mediterranean – accompanied by a battle group. This an open response to the increasing presence of NATO warships in the Black Sea.<\/p>\n
… EU, NATO and the US are losing on the Georgian front. Russia will now station military forces on a permanent basis under collective defense agreements yet to be signed. with Abkhazia and (South) Ossetia This means, that no outside military forces will be accepted as peace-keeping or monitoring forces in those regions – unless OSCE and EU start negotiations on that matter with the governments of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. As this would mean an implicit recognition of those state’s independence, this will not happen anyway.<\/p>\n
I do not expect the admission of South Ossetia to Russia anytime soon.<\/p>\n
… The West’s new front is Ukraine. The EU will make every effort to deepen and speed up Ukraine’s rapprochement with the EU. Well, we have to wait if this will deepen the domestic political crisis in Ukraine and how Russia will react with regard to the legal status of Sevastopol.<\/p>\n
… The most important event of the recent days is the fundamental change of Germany’s position on the future relations with Russia. Merkel used very strong words on her recent visits to Sweden and Estonia. She was the first foreign leader to publicly mention Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the founding treaty of NATO. This was a very blunt signal to Moscow that any further red lines crossed regarding NATO members in the Baltic region will meet military resistance by NATO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
… Finally, major western media report on the reckless\u00a0 and insdiscriminate assault of the Georgian forces on Tskhinval duing the night August 7th, their deliberate attacks on Russian peace-keeping soldiers with tanks and heavy artillery and war crimes. OSCE observer’s reports are now being leaked to the press. This was known from the very early … Continue reading … a chilling peace … (latest entries on top)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3172,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions\/3172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/0\/0b\/Flag_of_South_Ossetia.gif\")
… Finally, major western media report on the reckless\u00a0 and insdiscriminate assault of the Georgian forces on Tskhinval duing the night August 7th, their deliberate attacks on Russian peace-keeping soldiers with tanks and heavy artillery and war crimes. OSCE observer’s reports are now being leaked to the press. This was known from the very early hours of this crisis, but was ignored by most western media and politicians. What strikes me most with this crisis is either disastrous ignorance or, more likely, partisan interpretation by our diplomatic and political elites and a lack of professionalism of our media. This in itself is a distressing feature of the August chill. What angers me, though, is the very fact, that those of us who told the true story from the very start, have been denounced as Russophiles. The most bizarre new term used in the German media is ‘Russlandversteher’. It is to denounce those analytsts who stick to non-partisan analysis and tries to resist the posh Russia-bashing.<\/p>\n