[simon]

Originally Posted by Argos

Mostly agreed, but there are a few things I see a bit different.

I think Georgia is a special case. In Soviet times very different nationalities were joint to the Grusinian SSR against the will of most of the northern and western 'Grusinian' people. When Georgia became independent, those ethnical groups IMMEDIATELY wanted to split off, namely Adjaria, Abchasia and South Ossetia, which always wanted a reunion with northern Ossets. Tbilisi reacted with all their brutality to this efforts until the Russian minorities in those regions called for the Red Army, who since then 'protected' them, certainly not out of humanity, but because they wanted to avoid the conflict spread to the northern (Russian) Caucasus. This protection was negotiated internationally, so no use to blame Russia for this.

That's true about South Ossetia, but in Abkhazia it's the Abkhazians who committed the biggest human rights violations, with Russian support. About 250,000 ethnic Georgians (the majority of the population) were ethnically cleansed from Abkhazia.

Georgia got more and more important for the USA and EU, because of the oil-pipeline projects from the Caspic to the Black Sea, but the conflicts could not be solved.

It could instead be said that Georgia became more important to Russia because it wants to prevent any such pipeline being built as it would reduce its leverage in the region.

Russia stopped the support for Adjaria, their most distant trouble spot, to give Georgia the chance to show, that they are able to solve the ethnic problems peacefully and in consent with the population. They failed. So Russia is no more willing to cooperate with Georgia.

The Adjaran people themselves overthrew Aslan Abashidze, their Russian-backed dictator, in the aftermath of the Rose Revolution. The Georgian government has subsequently reduced Adjara's autonomy too far, but that doesn't justify Russia's embargo of Georgia, which is causing a great deal of hardship.

The conflict between Russia and Georgia escalated. My view to this: The USA and EU were far too long only economically interested in Georgia, not politically. Their efforts now, to join Georgia to NATO and EU, is just another affront to Russia, solving the ethnic problem in 'ingesting' Georgia into their realm.

Why do you think Russia has the right to meddle in Georgia's affairs, but that the US and the EU don't have the right to support the elected Georgian government? The EU is a much less interested party and has a much better record of handling ethnic disputes than Russia does. Look at Chechnya.

Well, this should be seen in a different way, too. The World Trade Union has moaned since years, that Russia gives it's 'satellites' oil and gas for a fraction (about 10 %) of the world market price and requested that Russia should increase the prices in several steps, which has been promised by Russia. They just began with those countries, who were not especially 'cooperative' with Russia. theft and then closing off the pipelines were the logical consequences. I wouldn't blame Russia for this. Every country who has the power to do so, makes strategical politics with it's ressources. The USA began a war, justified with lies, for this.

I wasn't claiming that Russia didn't have the right to increase its prices to market levels, although the timing of the price increases for Georgia and Ukraine were politically motivated. I was pointing out that countries across Europe are concerned that Russia will turn off the gas to them for purely political reasons. That's something Russia has already done with oil when it cut the oil pipeline to Lithuania.