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Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Europe | S Ossetia releases OSCE observers - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8009596.stm

South Ossetia Georgia OSCE

shared by Argos Media on 21 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Two OSCE observers detained on Tuesday by separatist forces in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia have been freed, an OSCE spokeswoman says.
  • Earlier, South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity said the OSCE personnel were being held for "illegally crossing the Georgian-South Ossetian border". The monitors are overseeing a ceasefire agreement between Georgia and Russia.
  • Twenty-eight OSCE military observers have been based in Georgia since 1992, but following last year's conflict, the South Ossetian authorities have denied them access. Russia, which has thousands of troops in the territory, has also objected to their presence.
Argos Media

Russia expels two diplomats as Nato begins military exercises in Georgia | World news |... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ato-military-exercises-georgia

NATO Russia Dmitry Rogozin Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili

shared by Argos Media on 06 May 09 - Cached
  • Nato today began a series of controversial military exercises in Georgia following an apparent failed uprising at a Georgian army base yesterday and Moscow's expulsion of two Nato diplomats this morning.
  • Russia said it was expelling Isabelle Francois, the Canadian head of Nato's Moscow information office, and a worker at her office.The move was in retaliation for last week's expulsion of two Russian diplomats, who had been accused of spying, from Nato's Brussels HQ, Russia's foreign ministry said.
  • Yesterday, Saakashvili claimed to have thwarted a Russian-backed mutiny at the Mukhrovani army base near the capital, Tbilisi.Russia dismissed the claim as "absurd" and suggested Saakashvili "send for a doctor".
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  • Dmitry Rogozin, the hawkish Russian ambassador to Nato, said Nato should cancel the exercises."Nato needs to show flexibility and hear our arguments. The worst thing is that this organisation is becoming more and more unpredictable," he said. "Nato's behaviour is not decent, stable or appropriate."
  • The exercises take place against the backdrop of a growing military buildup on both sides of Georgia's tense and disputed borders with the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.Russia has beefed up its military presence in both territories, and last week signed an agreement giving its army full control of border security.
  • The EU and Nato have strongly protested against the move, saying it is in breach of a peace agreement signed last August by Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozvy.Under the deal, Medvedev promised to pull Russian troops back to their positions before last summer's war over South Ossetia.
  • Saakashvili's position in Georgia, meanwhile, is increasingly under threat following a series of protests by the country's opposition.Opposition leaders have dismissed yesterday's apparent army mutiny as a fabrication by Saakashvili designed to discredit his internal enemies.
  • Today's exercises involve more than 1,000 soldiers from a dozen Nato member states and partner nations.Several countries, including neighbouring Armenia, have recently pulled out of the exercises, apparently fearing Russian displeasure.
Argos Media

Russia and EU begin summit amid mutual exasperation | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...russia-eu-summit-khabarovsk

EU Russia Eastern Partnership Dmitry Medvedev Fyodor Lukyanov Belarus

shared by Argos Media on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • The summit comes at a time of growing frustration between Brussels and Moscow over a host of issues ranging from energy policy to the war in Georgia. The EU was irritated by Russia's gas war in January with Ukraine and Medvedev's failure to pull Russian troops out of the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
  • For its part, the Kremlin is annoyed by the EU's attempt earlier this month to improve ties with half a dozen post-Soviet countries. A summit of 33 countries in Prague brought the EU's 27 governments together for the first time with the leaders of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus.
  • Russia believes the EU's "eastern partnership" initiative is a challenge to its own strategic and security interests in a region it regards as its backyard. Medvedev insists that Moscow enjoys what he calls "privileged interests" in states occupying the volatile buffer zone between the EU and the Russian Federation.
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  • Today Medvedev joked with a group of students that the remote summit venue, 3,800 miles from Moscow or 5,300 miles via the epic Trans-Siberian Express, had been chosen to remind the Europeans of Russia's vast size. Several EU delegates moaned when Russia held last year's summit with the EU in western Siberia, Medvedev said."They complained: 'Oh, it's a long way.' We said: 'If you don't like it you can fly somewhere else.' They thought for a bit and said: 'OK, we're ready,'" Medvedev said. He added: "They [the Europeans] should understand how big Russia is and should feel its greatness. On the other hand, we also want a partnership with the EU. It's important for us to get together."
  • "Russia and EU relations are in stalemate. There is a serious lack of mutual understanding, a lack of willingness to understand each other, and a lack of strategic common values," Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, told the Guardian.He went on: "Relations with Obama and the US are now better. At the same time relations with the EU are getting worse. Since the 1990s Russian-EU relations have been governed by the assumption that Russia would go the European way without applying for membership. This model is now exhausted. They need a new model."
  • According to Lukyanov, the Kremlin was furious after the EU pressured Belarus this month not to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia. "The message was: choose Russia or not Russia. It was absolutely unnecessary from the European side. Alexander Lukashenko [Belarus's president] wasn't going to recognise them anyway for his own reasons," Lukyanov said.
Pedro Gonçalves

Russia and Ukraine in Intensifying Standoff - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...28crimea.html

Russia Ukraine

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 28 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Late last month, the Ukrainian police briefly detained Russian military personnel who were driving truckloads of missiles through this port city, as if they were smugglers who had come ashore with a haul of contraband. Local officials, it seemed, were seeking to make clear that this was no longer friendly terrain.
  • President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia denounced Ukraine this month for “anti-Russian” policies, citing in particular its “incessant attempts” to harass Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol. Mr. Medvedev condemned Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership and its support for Georgia, and said he would not send an ambassador to Ukraine.
  • The Ukrainians have not only briefly detained Russian military personnel transporting missiles on several occasions this summer. They also expelled a Russian diplomat who oversees naval issues and barred officers from the F.S.B., the Russian successor to the K.G.B., from working in Sevastopol.
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  • The current concern is that a spark in Crimea — however unlikely — could touch off a violent confrontation or even the kind of fighting that broke out between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia. The situation is particularly uneasy because the population in Crimea is roughly 60 percent ethnic Russian and would prefer that the peninsula separate from Ukraine and be part of Russia. (Sevastopol has an even higher proportion of ethnic Russians.)
  • People have been upset by new Ukrainian government policies that require the use of the Ukrainian language, rather than Russian, in government activities, including some courses in public schools. Throughout downtown Sevastopol last week, residents set up booths to gather signatures on petitions in an effort to overturn the regulations.
  • And on Monday, Ukrainian independence day, ethnic Russians in Crimea held anti-Ukrainian demonstrations.
  • Sergei P. Tsekov, a senior politician in Crimea who heads the main ethnic Russian communal organization, said he hoped that Russia would wholeheartedly endorse Crimean separatism just as it did the aspirations of South Ossetia and another Georgian enclave, Abkhazia.
  • Crimean separatists have been encouraged by prominent politicians in Russia, including Moscow’s mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov, and a senior member of Parliament, Konstantin F. Zatulin, both of whom have been barred from Ukraine by the government because of their assertions that Sevastopol belongs to Russia.The Kremlin has not publicly backed the separatists, though it has declared that the rights of ethnic Russians in Crimea must not be violated.
Pedro Gonçalves

Russia backs EU, not U.S., role in Georgia | International | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE5741LC20090805

Georgia Abkhazia Ossetia Russia EU US

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Moscow welcomes the work of EU monitors in Georgia, deployed in the Caucasus state a year ago after the Russian invasion, but is opposed to the United States having a role, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.
  • Under a peace deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the European Union has sent 240 unarmed monitors to Georgia to oversee a fragile ceasefire. Georgia now wants the United States to join the monitoring. "The presence of EU monitors on Georgian territories bordering South Ossetia and Abkhazia is an important stabilizing factor and we support such a presence," Lavrov told state-run television channel Vesti-24.
  • Georgia, keen to get Western support in its stand-off with Russia, asked the United States last month to join the EU monitoring mission -- although the EU itself has not made any such request to Washington. Lavrov said the Georgian request was part of a plan to drag the United States into a confrontation. "The idea is absolutely clear and we honestly told this to our U.S. colleagues," Lavrov said. "This is all about dragging Americans into Georgia and pitching them against the Russian military." "After that, the Georgian masters of provocation... will try doing their traditional job," he added. "The risks of this are clear, Europe and the United States understand them."
Argos Media

Foreign Policy: Don't Forget Georgia - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...cms.php

Georgia US NATO Russia

shared by Argos Media on 13 Apr 09 - Cached
  • some analysts have been wondering whether the Obama administration will seek to distance itself from the government in Tbilisi in an effort to score points with Moscow and differentiate itself from its predecessor. Indeed, a clear U.S. focus on "resetting" relations with Russia, as Vice President Biden said in early February in Munich, raises questions for Georgia. Will Washington sacrifice closer relations with Tbilisi in order to warm up to Moscow? This would be a mistake.
  • Georgia already paid a price when NATO allies, meeting last April in Bucharest, failed to offer Tbilisi (and Kiev) a Membership Action Plan; that decision was likely interpreted in Moscow as a green light to engage in more reckless behavior within the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and toward Tbilisi.
  • Yes, the United States does need to think carefully before launching a serious effort to rearm Georgia. The obvious yet painful reality is that Georgia simply is no match militarily for Russia, and we should not pretend otherwise. Giving less military support might also reinforce the U.S. message that the military option for resolving the South Ossetia and Abkhazia problems is out of the question.
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  • There is no guarantee that backing off support for Georgia, whether on NATO or more broadly, would lead to improved ties with Russia. The days when U.S. relations with the states in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova) are viewed through a Russian prism should be long over.
  • Supporting Georgia's NATO aspirations, however, is a matter of principle. Last April in Bucharest, the alliance declared, "[We] welcome Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO." Even while aiming to reset relations with Russia, President Obama has pledged to uphold the principle that "countries who seek and aspire to join NATO are able to join NATO." For NATO's own credibility, Russia cannot be granted a de facto veto over other countries' aspirations for membership. Nor should wishful thinking of better relations with Russia get in the way of Georgia's aspirations, which the United States has encouraged.
Pedro Gonçalves

Georgia: expect storms ahead | Simon Tisdall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...georgia-storms-ahead

Georgia Russia EU

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • For energy-poor western Europe, Georgia is a vital conduit for Caspian basin oil and gas exports that are not, for now at least, under Moscow's manipulative control. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin views Georgia very much as part of its backyard, a "near abroad" property (though the phrase is not much used these days) that should conform to Russian interests. Europe believes it belongs inside its post-Soviet, liberal pro-market "eastern neighbourhood".
  • The idea Georgia might one day join Nato – it already contributes through the Partnership for Peace scheme – and the EU is anathema to Russian nationalists. It is not coincidental that since 2008, when Putin sent his tanks deep into Georgian territory in support of independence for the breakaway satraps of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia has effectively controlled about one-fifth of Georgia's total land mass.
  • The problem for both sides of this strategic equation is that Georgia's leaders – they might better be termed overlords – tend not to do what they are told, even by putative friends. Saakashvili's authoritarian, sometimes confrontational style, pockmarked by serial rights abuses including a recent prison torture scandal, has embarrassed his Brussels backers. The west wants a stable Georgian government, not one engaged in a personalised, potentially dangerous feud with the Putin regime.Yet the man behind the Georgian Dream opposition, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, could also prove an awkward customer, should he be confirmed as prime minister. Ivanishvili made his money, lots and lots of it, during Russia's corrupt oligarch era. He still reportedly holds a chunk of Gazprom shares. Saakashvili predictably labelled him a Kremlin stooge, a charge he denies.
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  • "Greek scholar Ilia Roubanis has called Georgian politics 'pluralistic feudalism', a competition between a patriarchal leader who enjoys uncontested rule over the country and a leader of the opposition bidding to unseat him and acquire the same [...]
  • Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Oct 12
     
    "For energy-poor western Europe, Georgia is a vital conduit for Caspian basin oil and gas exports that are not, for now at least, under Moscow's manipulative control. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin views Georgia very much as part of its backyard, a "near abroad" property (though the phrase is not much used these days) that should conform to Russian interests. Europe believes it belongs inside its post-Soviet, liberal pro-market "eastern neighbourhood"."
Pedro Gonçalves

Georgia's president Saakashvili concedes election defeat | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...nt-saakashvili-election-defeat

Georgia Russia

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Another unanswered question is Ivanishvili's policy towards Russia. The tycoon's international priorities are similar to Saakashvili's, and include European integration and Nato. But he has also pledged to improve relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia. Ivanishvili said he would try to convince Russia that Georgia's strategic aspirations were not a threat.
  • Russia welcomed the result, saying ties that had been frozen in the wake of the 2008 Russian-Georgia war could be renewed.
  • "We are definitely looking forward for a fresh, new non-hostile, sober leadership in Georgia," said Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman.
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  • A new leadership would be "very good, very positive for us", he continued. "If they have more political wisdom under a new leadership, then lots and lots of new roads can be opened for the country." Russia cut ties with Georgia in the wake of the 2008 war over South Ossetia.
  • Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the current prime minister who was president at the time of the war, have refused to speak to Saakashvili. Ivanishvili has raised the prospect that some of Georgia's key exports – such as wine and mineral water – banned by Moscow in 2006 could now resume.
  • Relations are expected to improve under Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Europe | Anti-government clash in Georgia - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8036942.stm

Georgia Nino Burjanadze Russia Tbilissi NATO Dmitry Medvedev

shared by Argos Media on 07 May 09 - Cached

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    Anti-government clash in Georgia

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    Tensions appear to be rising in Tbilisi

    Anti-government protesters and police have clashed in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, amid rising national tensions.

    Riot police used batons on protesters trying to enter a police compound where three people were being held over the alleged beating of a local journalist.

    The clashes were the first major unrest since anti-government demonstrations began in early April.

    They come a day after the authorities said they had thwarted an army mutiny at a base outside the capital.

  • Later in the evening, opposition leaders and supporters gathered outside parliament for a rally, as they have daily since 9 April.
  • The latest unrest comes as Georgia hosts a series of Nato training exercises amid angry condemnation from Russia. They are taking place close to areas where Russian troops are stationed in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia. Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev said the drills, involving more than 1,000 soldiers from 18 countries, were "an overt provocation".
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  • On Tuesday, Mr Saakashvili claimed his government had put down a brief mutiny among a tank battalion. Tbilisi had said it was part of a Russian-linked coup attempt to kill Mr Saakashvili. But opposition parties said the alleged mutiny was a deliberate attempt by the government to distract attention from the new phase of anti-government protests.
  • Anti-government protesters and police have clashed in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, amid rising national tensions. Riot police used batons on protesters trying to enter a police compound where three people were being held over the alleged beating of a local journalist. The clashes were the first major unrest since anti-government demonstrations began in early April. They come a day after the authorities said they had thwarted an army mutiny at a base outside the capital.
Pedro Gonçalves

Barack Obama urges Russia not to interfere in neighbouring states | World news | guardi... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...obama-russia-first-trip

US Russia Obama

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Barack Obama today set out his vision for a new post-cold war world, and urged Russia not to interfere in neighbouring states and to move on "from old ways of thinking".
  • In a keynote speech during his first trip to Russia as US president, Obama called on Moscow to stop viewing America as an adversary. The assumption that Russia and the US were eternal antagonists was "a 20th-century view" rooted in the past, he said.
  • Obama delivered a tough, though implicit, critique of Kremlin foreign policy, rejecting the claim it has "privileged interests" in post-Soviet countries. He said the 19th-century doctrine of spheres of influence and "great powers forging competing blocs" was finished."In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over," he said, speaking to graduates from Moscow's New Economic School.
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  • "America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia."
  • Crucially, though, Obama indicated that Washington would not tolerate another Russian invasion of Georgia. Russia is winding up full-scale military exercises next to the Georgian border amid ominous predictions that a second conflict in the Caucasus could erupt this summer.
  • On Monday Obama reaffirmed Georgia's sovereignty – severely undermined by last year's war and Moscow's subsequent unilateral recognition of rebel-held Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. Today Obama defended "state sovereignty", describing it as "a cornerstone of international order".
  • He also said that Georgia and Ukraine had a right to choose their own foreign policy and leaders, and could join Nato if they wanted. Russia is deeply opposed to Ukraine's and Georgia's accession, and wants the White House to rule out their future membership. Today Obama responded by saying that Nato sought collaboration with Russia, not confrontation.
Argos Media

Foreign Policy: Don't Forget Georgia - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...cms.php

Georgia US South Ossetia Abkhazia

shared by Argos Media on 13 Apr 09 - Cached
  • as Vice President Biden said in Munich and as President Obama made clear during his recent trip to Europe, the United States must never recognize South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence.
  • That said, bringing those separatist regions back under Georgian control won't happen any time soon. The hope is that Georgia, through political and economic reform, becomes an attractive place for South Ossetians and Abkhazians to some day want to join. That will take time and patience on the part of the Georgian leadership, not traits often associated with Saakashvili.
  • Finally, the United States has to fix the international impression that its policy is support for "Misha first, Georgia second." It would be a mistake to dump Saakashvili to support any other candidates -- that's for the Georgians themselves to decide. But America should support processes that encourage a level playing field and avoid picking favorites. To that end, the return to Georgia of former U.N. Ambassador Irakli Alasania to join the opposition against Saakashvili has increased the possibility of more effective checks and balances against the government.
Argos Media

Russia Keeps Troops in Georgia, Defying Deal - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...03georgia.html

Georgia Russia South Ossetia

shared by Argos Media on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The official also said that European leaders had been reluctant to confront Russia over the cease-fire plan. Instead, they have appeared willing to accept the cessation of open fighting and the withdrawal of Russian forces from other positions as significant steps.
  • The Bush administration declared that Russia was not in compliance with the cease-fire. The Obama administration, which has been exploring options for cooperation with the Kremlin, has not yet taken a clear public position.
  • Georgian officials have not been publicly critical of the United States. They have made clear, however, that their own ability to get Russia to comply with the agreement is essentially nonexistent.
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  • Asked what tools were available to Georgia, Shota Utiashvili, who heads the analysis section of Georgia’s Interior Ministry, answered with a single word: “None.”
  • The Ossetian government does not allow European monitors on its territory, and it denied access to a Times reporter seeking to cross the boundary; for these reasons, the Georgian numbers and assertions could not be independently confirmed.
Argos Media

Russia Keeps Troops in Georgia, Defying Deal - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...03georgia.html

Russia Georgia Europe US South Ossetia

shared by Argos Media on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Nearly eight months after the war between Russia and Georgia, Russian troops continue to hold Georgian territory that the Kremlin agreed to vacate as part of a formal cease-fire, leaving a basic condition of that agreement unfulfilled.
  • It also underscores the strength of Russia’s military position in the southern Caucasus and its enduring confidence in undermining President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia and standing up to the West, even as Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia have signaled an intention to improve relations. Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev met on Wednesday, and exchanged warm remarks and pledges to cooperate, raising questions in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, about whether the United States would push to have the cease-fire plan fully honored.
  • Under the conditions of the cease-fire, the armed forces of all sides were to return to the positions they held before the war, which erupted Aug. 7. The agreement required a cessation of fighting, corridors for aid delivery and no use of force. It also granted Russia a loosely defined permission to take further security measures while waiting for international monitors.
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  • But even though European monitors have long been on the ground, Russia still holds large areas that had irrefutably been under Georgian control, and thousands of Georgians have not been allowed free access to homes far from the disputed territory where the war began.
  • Several areas under Russian control are at odds with the terms of the cease-fire plan. The most obvious examples are in the Kodori Gorge and the agricultural valley outside the town of Akhalgori
  • Gilles Janvier, deputy head of the European monitoring mission, said in an interview that Russia had told diplomats that it had entered its own military agreement with the two breakaway regions in Georgia, which the Kremlin recognizes as independent states, and that these newer arrangements rendered the troop withdrawal component of the cease-fire plan obsolete.
  • “They say there is now a new bilateral agreement between them and South Ossetian and Abkhaz forces that lets them station troops,” Mr. Janvier said.
  • A senior American official said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton raised the subject in her meeting in early March with Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, to no apparent effect.
Argos Media

On Its 60th Birthday, NATO's Future Is Looking Cloudy - TIME - 0 views

www.time.com/...0,8599,1889320,00.html

NATO Georgia Ukraine Russia Afghanistan Europe

shared by Argos Media on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Most of today's leaders of NATO member states were not yet born when the Alliance was forged, and almost two decades after the Soviet Union's collapse, military analysts see the Alliance as mired in an identity crisis.
  • "It's entirely unclear what NATO's reason for existence is after 1989 [the year the Berlin Wall came down]," says Tarak Barkawi, senior lecturer in international security at Cambridge University's Center for International Studies.
  • "The Taliban does not accept defeat, so how can you win?" says Karl-Heinz Kamp, director of the research division for the NATO Defense College in Rome, which trains all ranking NATO officials and diplomats. "NATO might not be able to lose or win in a classic military way," he adds.
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  • the limited reinforcements made available by the Europeans — and the restrictions to noncombatant roles in order to win the consent of Europe's mostly antiwar electorates — has raised questions about the purpose of the Alliance. "NATO lost its credibility when it refused to commit the resources needed," says Barkawi.
  • In Europe, says De Hoop Scheffer, a former Dutch politician, "fighting is not very popular."
  • During the 1990s, the Alliance began expanding, inducting nine new members from Eastern Europe's former Soviet territories and satellites that sought protection from Russian power.
  • But that program seemed to hit a wall last August, when Georgia fought a five-day war against Russia for control of South Ossetia.
  • Georgia, whose bid to join the Alliance had been strongly backed by the U.S., was viewed by many Western officials as having provoked a senseless fight, which would have obliged NATO to get involved had Georgia been a full member. Last summer's confrontation put Georgia's membership in the deep freeze, as well as that of Ukraine, whose accession to NATO would also be taken as a provocation by Moscow.
  • Moreover, NATO's passivity in the face of Russia's pummeling of Georgia will have left member nations along Russia's western frontier wondering what extent of support they could rely on from NATO allies in the event of a confrontation with Moscow.
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