 To the Caucasus via Kosovo
SIA CHECHENPRESS February 16, 2008
The Russian authorities have openly stated that they will annex the occupied Georgian territories following the recognition of Kosovo’s independence. The Kremlin has not managed to restrain itself until the recognition of Kosovo’ s independence has been completed and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced his country’s plans after the meeting with his puppets nicknamed ‘the President of Abkhazia’ and ‘the President of South Ossetia’.
The desire to affiliate the territories controlled by Moscow has been presented by the Russian side as ‘a reluctant change of policy towards Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the case of Kosovo’s unilaterally declaring independence’.
Russia is trying to link the status of the entities it controls with Kosovo’s status , presenting the former as allegedly trying to declare their independence from Georgia and claiming that the recognition of Kosovo’s independence is setting an international precedent.
To begin with, the international community does not consider Kosovo’s situation a precedent for Moscow’s attempts to satisfy its imperial ambitions in the Caucasus and it has warned Russia as much, including from some high international rostrums.
Secondly, the Russians are being economical with the truth when they talk about some sort of ‘recognition’ of Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s independence. They do not mean the recognition of the independence of these entities, but an affiliation of these territories by Russia , in other words, their annexation. Neither the puppet regimes appointed by Russia in these regions, nor the Russian government itself have made any attempt to conceal their true intentions.
The operation of the wholesale passportization of the populations in the occupied territories is a case in point. The citizens of Georgia who live in the territories controlled by the pro-Moscow regimes have all of a sudden been declared citizens of Russia, after several sackfulls of Russian passport forms had been imported and distributed among them. This ‘passportization’ reveals the true extent of the Russians intentions. Not everyone agrees, however. The exception are some Georgian politicians who continue to apply the term ‘peacekeepers’ to the Russian occupiers.
‘The declaration and recognition of Kosovo’s independence would, no doubt, have to be considered in terms of its implications for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. At the same time Russia reaffirms its unfailing committment to contribute to the peaceful resolution of the Georgian-Abkhaz and the Georgian-Ossetian conflicts within the framework of the existing formats and to resist any attempts to solve the problem by force’. This is the wording of the hypocritical document issued by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
But the point is that the ‘committment to peaceful resolution’ on the part of the occupying force, which is trying to annex the ‘conflict zones’ sounds rather odd. To speak plainly, this is a non plus ultra of insolence when an occupier wants a peaceful transferral and formalisation of their control over the occupied territories. This is exactly what Russia wants and this is why it ‘pledges to do its best to resist any attempt to solve the problem by force.’ Why would a burglar want to see his plunder recovered by force?!
When one analyses the statements and plans of the Kremlin relating to the situation around Kosovo and Georgia, one could make two assumptions. The first is that the Russian rulers have simply gone potty (as a result of vodka, genetic heredity, way of life etc) and are not capable of calculating clearly even the immediate consequences.
The second assumption is similar to the first. It is that the inhabitants of the Kremlin – the masters of Russia, with all their fixed and movable assets, with their 150 mln serfs, to put it bluntly in the words of their ringleader Putin, have ‘ lost their flair’. They behave like the proverbial fat goat who with the surfeit of food and his newly found confidence had decided one day to taste ‘some wolf’ and so set off for the forest….
What became of the goat is quite obvious and needs no explanation in the same way as one does not need to explain what would happen to Russia if it decides to wave a rusty hatchet at the rest of the world at the time when even according to the Russian official statistics the losses incurred by the Russian occupiers in Chechnya with its million population have already exceeded the Soviet losses in Afganistan with its several million people. All we need is wait….
By Zaurbek Galaev
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