Medvedev says bigger part of Russian involvement is to coerce Georgia to peace

Peacekeepers seize army base inside Georgia

Russia Today, August 11, 2008, 23:53

Russian peacekeeping forces have taken control of Georgia’s largest airbase, about 40km from the border with Abkhazia. The Russian Defence Ministry said the troops were taking ‘preventative action’ at the base in the town of Senaki. The Georgian army is pulling in troops to Tbilisi to protect the capital from the advancing Russian forces.
Peacekeepers and other Russian land units have launched their first operation inside Georgian territory proper since Tbilisi began its offensive against the breakaway republic of South Ossetia last week. 

A spokesman for the Defence Ministry confirmed the incursion, which was first reported by Georgia’s Internal Ministry.

“Russian peacekeepers and military units attached to them are taking action to prevent Georgia from shelling South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers,” he said.


Map of the region
Another objective of the operation is to prevent ‘a build-up of additional volunteers and reservists’ mobilized to continue military operations the breakaway republics.

Earlier reports indicated that Abkhazian troops supported by Russian fighter planes had taken control of a village in Georgia’s Zugdidi region. But Abkhazian sources have denied the reports.

Meanwhile, the Georgian Foreign ministry announced that the Georgian town of Gori has been also captured by Russian troops. The Russia’s Defence ministry don’t confirm this information.

The new statement of the Georgian government demands the international community to interfere and save the country. 

And Georgia's President, Mikhail Saakashvili, said Georgia is now battling for its independence.

Talking to Georgia's Security Council he described the situation in the country as "very difficult" and said that Russian troops have reached the road connecting the eastern and western parts of Georgia.

Medvedev compares Georgia to Nazi Germany

While talking to Russian MPs on Monday, President Dmitry Medevev drew a clear parallel between the current Georgian regime and Nazi Germany.

The President said Russia is not going to “pacify the aggressor” as Europe did in 1938, by signing the Munich treaty with Hitler. “We all know to what tragic consequences this led,” he said.   

Dmitry Medvedev also described the Russian military operation in South Ossetia as “the only appropriate and absolutely effective” response.

U.S. starts evacuating embassy staff from Tbilisi 

Meanwhile, the U.S. has begun evacuating the families of its diplomats from Georgia.  They are being sent to Armenia as a precaution, according to the U.S. Embassy in the Armenian capital Yerevan.

U.S. ambassador John Tefft and his team of diplomats will continue their work in Tbilisi.

Georgian troops fire at refugees

Russia Today, August 11, 2008, 22:05

Authorities in South Ossetia say Georgian troops have shelled the road being used for evacuating people from the conflict zone, according to Russian Interfax news agency. Attacks are continuing in the South Ossetian region, despite claims from Georgia that it was imposing a ceasefire.
There have been several explosions in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, after it came under a renewed shelling attack. Several Russian troops have been wounded.

It said that Russian forces have shot down a Georgian military plane in South Ossetia in the area around Eredvi.

Russian humanitarian aid has begun to arrive in the breakaway region's capital.

Tskhinvali is back under peacekeepers' control, as Russian troops disarm Georgians, who still remain in the city.

Moscow is sending more troops to South Ossetia. And military investigators have already started working in Tskhinvali to collect evidence of war crimes.

1600 civilians are thought to have died in South Ossetia. 15 Russian peacekeepers were killed with 70 others were wounded. Georgia claims 50 of its troops have been killed, and around 300 wounded.

Georgian president says Russian troops have cut country in half, open 2nd front

By DAVID NOWAK Associated Press Writer

Aug 11, 2008, 3:00 PM EDT

GORI, Georgia (AP) --

Russian forces seized several towns and a military base deep in western Georgia on Monday, opening a second front in the fighting. Georgia's president said his country had been effectively cut in half with the capture of the main east-west highway near Gori.

Fighting also raged Monday around Tskhinvali, the capital of the separatist province of South Ossetia. Russian warplanes launched new air raids across Georgia, with at least one sending screaming civilians running for cover.

The reported capture of the key Georgian city of Gori and the towns of Senaki, Zugdidi and Kurga came despite a top Russian general's claim earlier Monday that Russia had no plans to enter Georgian territory. By taking Gori, which sits on Georgia's only east-west highway, Russia can cut off eastern Georgia from the country's western Black Sea coast.

"(Russian forces) came to the central route and cut off connections between western and eastern Georgia," Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili told a national security meeting.

The news agency Interfax, however, cited a Russian Defense Ministry official as denying Gori was captured.

Security Council head Alexander Lomaia said Monday it was not immediately clear if Russian forces would advance on Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. At Georgia's request, U.N. Security Council in New York called an emergency session for later Monday - the fifth meeting on the fighting in as many days.

The two-front battlefield was a major escalation in the conflict that blew up late Thursday after a Georgian offensive to regain control of the separatist province of South Ossetia. Even as Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge Monday with EU mediators, Russia flexed its military muscle and appeared determined to subdue the small U.S. ally that has been pressing for NATO membership.

On Monday afternoon, Russian troops invaded Georgia from the western separatist province of Abkhazia while most Georgian forces were busy with fighting in the central region around South Ossetia.

Russian armored personnel carriers moved into Senaki, a town 20 miles inland from Georgia's Black Sea port of Poti, Lomaia said. Russian forces also moved into Zugdidi, near Abkhazia, and seized police stations, while their Abkhazian allies took control of the nearby village of Kurga, according to witnesses and Georgian officials.

In Zugdidi, an AP reporter saw five or six Russian soldiers posted outside an Interior Ministry building. Several tanks and other armored vehicles were moving through the town but the streets were nearly deserted, with shops, restaurants and banks all shut down.

In the city of Gori, an AP reporter heard artillery fire and Georgian soldiers warned locals to get out because Russian tanks were approaching. Hundreds of terrified residents fled toward Tbilisi using any means of transport they could find. Many stood along the road trying to flag down passing cars.

An APTV film crew saw Georgian tanks and military vehicles speeding along the road from Gori to Tbilisi. Firing began and people ran for cover. A couple of cars could be seen in flames along the side of the road.

Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Both provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without international recognition since fighting to split from Georgia in the early 1990s - and both have close ties with Moscow.

Georgia began an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia late Thursday with heavy shelling and air strikes that ravaged South Ossetia's provincial capital of Tskhinvali.

The Russia response was swift and overpowering - thousands of troops that shelled the Georgians until they fled Tskhinvali on Sunday, and four days of bombing raids across Georgia.

Yet Georgia's pledge of a cease-fire rang hollow Monday. An AP reporter saw a small group of Georgian fighters open fire on a column of Russian and Ossetian military vehicles outside Tskhinvali, triggering a 30-minute battle. The Russians later said all the Georgians were killed.

Another AP reporter was in the village of Tkviavi, 7 1/2 miles south of Tskhinvali inside Georgia, when a bomb from a Russian Sukhoi warplane struck a house. The walls of neighboring buildings fell as screaming residents ran for cover. Eighteen people were wounded.

Georgian artillery fire was heard coming from fields about 200 yards away from the village, perhaps the bomber's target.

Hundreds of Georgian troops headed north Monday along the road toward Tskhinvali, pocked with tank regiments creeping up the highway into South Ossetia. Hundreds of other soldiers traveled via trucks in the opposite direction, towing light artillery weapons.

President Bush and other Western leaders have sharply criticized Russia's military response as disproportionate and say Russia appears to want the Georgian government overthrown. They have also complained that Russian warplanes - buzzing over Georgia since Friday - have bombed Georgian oil sites and factories far from the conflict zone.

The world's seven largest economic powers urged Russia to accept an immediate cease-fire Monday and agree to international mediation. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues from the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations spoke by telephone and pledged their support for a negotiated solution to the conflict.

"I've expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia and that we strongly condemn the bombing outside of South Ossetia," Bush told NBC Sports.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the United States for viewing Georgia as the victim, instead of the aggressor, and for airlifting Georgian troops back home from Iraq on Sunday.

"Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages," Putin said in Moscow. "And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed ten Ossetian villages at once, who ran elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilian alive in their sheds - these leaders must be taken under protection."

The U.S. military was flying Georgian troops back home from Iraq and informed the Russians about the flights ahead of time to avoid mishaps, said one military official said Monday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the subject on the record.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Monday morning that U.S. officials expect to have all Georgian troops out of Iraq by the end of the day.

Pentagon officials said Monday that U.S. military was assessing the fighting every day to determine whether U.S. trainers should be pulled out of the country.

The approximately 130 trainers, including a few dozen civilians, had been scattered at a number of sites to work with local units, but officials were working over the weekend to consolidate them in one reasonably safe location, two officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk about the subject on the record. Pentagon officials said Monday that all of members of the American groups had been accounted for.

Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge Monday proposed by the French and Finnish foreign ministers. The EU envoys headed to Moscow to try to persuade Russia to accept it.

Saakashvili, however, voiced concern that Russia's true goal was to undermine his pro-Western government. "It's all about the independence and democracy of Georgia," he said.

Saakashvili said Russia has sent 20,000 troops and 500 tanks into Georgia. He said Russian warplanes were bombing roads and bridges, destroying radar systems and targeting Tbilisi's civilian airport. One Russian bombing raid struck the Tbilisi airport area only a half-hour before the EU envoys arrived, he said.

Another hit near key Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which carries Caspian crude to the West. No supply interruptions have been reported.

Abkhazia's separatists declared Sunday they would push Georgian forces out of the northern part of the Kodori Gorge, the only area of Abkhazia still under Georgian control.

Before invading western Georgia, Russia's deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn demanded Monday that Georgia disarm its police in Zugdidi, a town just outside Abkhazia. Still he insisted "We are not planning any offensive."

At least 9,000 Russian troops and 350 armored vehicles were in Abkhazia, according to a Russian military commander.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said more than 2,000 people have been killed in South Ossetia since Friday, most of them Ossetians with Russian passports. The figures could not be independently confirmed, but refugees who fled Tskhinvali over the weekend said hundreds had been killed.

Many found shelter in the Russian province of North Ossetia.

"The Georgians burned all of our homes," said one elderly woman, as she sat on a bench under a tree with three other white-haired survivors. "The Georgians say it is their land. Where is our land, then?"

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Associated Press writers Chris Torchia reported from Zugdidi, Georgia; Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili from Tbilisi, Georgia; David Nowak from Gori, Georgia; Douglas Birch from Vladikavkaz, Russia; Jim Heintz, Vladimir Isachenkov and Lynn Berry from Moscow; and Pauline Jelinek from Washington.

EU confirms ministerial meeting on South Ossetia to be held Wednesday

11.08.2008, 15.16

BRUSSELS, August 11 (Itar-Tass) -

European Union has issued an official confirmation saying that a ministerial-level meeting of the 27 member-states regarding the situation in the unrecognized republic of South Ossetia will be held in Brussels Wednesday. A statement on the meeting was issued by France that has the current term of EU's rotating presidency.

Well-informed sources told Itar-Tass French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner will inform his counterparts from EU countries on the results of his trips to Moscow and the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

South Ossetia, formally a part of Georgia that has existed as a de facto independent state since the early 1990's, has become the target of a large-scale assault by Georgian Armed Forces that began last Friday. Russia responded to it by sending reinforcement to the peacekeeping contingent in the zone of conflict.

Medvedev: bigger part of operation to coerce Georgia to peace over

11.08.2008, 14.06

MOSCOW, August 11 (Itar-Tass) -

Russian forces have completed a greater part of the operation to coerce Georgia to peace in South Ossetia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who also has the powers of the Commander-in-Chief under the Constitution, said Monday.

“We’ve ended a bigger part of the operation to coerce the Georgian side to peace in South Ossetia,” he said at a meeting with Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

“The Russian peacekeeping contingent has fully taken Tskhinval /South Ossetia’s capital – Itar-Tass/ under control,” Medvedev said.

He said the peacekeepers will continue defending Russian citizens. “We – by saying ‘we’ I mean Russian peacekeepers – will continue doing everything in our power to defend Russian citizens’ life and dignity,” Medvedev said.

Georgian Su-25 jet shot down while attacking positions of Russia’s the 58th army

11.08.2008, 16.27

TSKHINVAL, August 11 (Itar-Tass) --

A Georgian Su-25 jet was shot down in South Ossetia while attacking positions of Russia’s the 58th army and a South Ossetian battalion in the area of Eredvi.

A South Ossetian police has told Itar-Tass he was a witness to the incident, which took place fifteen minutes ago.

Twelve foreign mercenaries get into territory of Dagestan

11.08.2008, 15.07

MOSCOW, August 11 (Itar-Tass) - 

Russia's Federal Security Service FSB has detained an officer of the Georgian Intelligence Service, who coordinated the activity of agents on Russian territory, FSB director Alexander Bortnikov said Monday. He said that, on the whole, the FSB has detained nine agents of Georgian secret services that were engineering terrorist acts inside Russia.

A total of twelve foreign mercenaries have been shifted to the territory of Russia's North Caucasus region of Dagestan from abroad. "We have the information that a group of twelve mercenaries has penetrated Dagestan from one of the neighboring countries," he said.

"We're watching the group now together with partners from the CIS," Bortnikov said.

Georgia is war criminal – deputy chief of Russia’s General Staff

11.08.2008, 15.16

MOSCOW, August 11 (Itar-Tass) --

Georgia has committed an act of aggression against civilians, and for this reason it falls within the category “war criminal,” the deputy chief of the General Staff, Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsin, said told a news conference on Monday.

“We have a working system of international rules ‘combatant- non-combatant’. The responsibility should be borne by the party that violates these rules,” he said. “War on civilians is regarded as the gravest crime and this is precisely what we are witnesses to in the current conflict. The one who conducts such a war is believed as war criminal. What we have seen is actual extermination of the indigenous population of a country whose territory is a scene of combat operations.”

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