Category: Caucasian Politics

Anatol Lieven, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington has a good piece about Chechnya in the IHT. He believes that the West needs a new strategy for Chechnya and that this strategy should have 3 vital components: The first would be directed towards Moscow, and would echo our approach…

The BBC are streaming a copy of a video recorded inside the school at Beslan, probably early on in it siege. It seems to depict the number of explosives present, and how many hostage takers/murderers in the gym.

So amidst all the tragedy in North Ossetia, a Georgian film crew was captured by…the Russian Security Services? Surely not during the funerals of hundreds of Ossetian, slaughtered as they were by terrorist murderers? Yes, and the FSB are acting pretty strange about it too. Putin seems to be gunning for a showdown with Georgia…

Neal Ascherson writing in the IHT discusses the other problem in the Caucasus: Abkazia. While the world’s media has been focused on the school siege in North Ossetia, and the related Chechen problem, is has paid almost no attention to the brewing problems in either South Ossetia or Abkazia. Neal writes in depth about the…

Salih Brandt, a former European spokesman for the Chechen government, made some curious remarks on This Week today. Roisin Duffy was even a little shocked. You can listen to him being interviewed here. But I have gone to the trouble of transcribing the most curious bit: Salih Brandt: In the background of this you have…

I have been following events in North Ossetia, as my readers know, I follow events in this region with a keen interest. South Ossetia was recently the scene of some skirmishes with Georgian troops, a situation that is likely to flare up again in the near future. It now seems that these Chechens in North…

Dan Drezner ads his two cents, and believes that Saakashvili is a good leader. Screw Bush or Kerry — why can’t someone like Mikheil Saakashvili run for president in the United States? As someone who witnessed first-hand the Soviet-style traffic police in action when living in Ukraine, I could only weep with joy after reading…

Georgia has begun withdrawing troops from the conflict zone in South Ossetia a day after it claimed to have captured key strategic positions in the area. It is handing over control to a joint peacekeeping force composed of Russian, Ossetian and Georgian soldiers. Events move fast.

Looks like Georgia may be getting cold feet, as the prospect of more conflict looms. But it appears that this might not be the end of things: Mr Saakashvili called his offer “the last chance for peace” in South Ossetia. A ceasefire deal reached last Friday has now been violated for five nights in a…

Yet another piece in the IHT on the Georgian situation. Eugene’s advice to Saakashvili: For reunification to happen, Abkhazia and South Ossetia will have to be guaranteed utmost autonomy within the new Georgia, without it actually crossing the line to sovereignty. And Saakashvili will have to give up some of his ambitions temporarily in order…