29 August 2020 — Off Guardian
In 2017, explosive allegations first emerged that the authorities of the Chechen Republic were reportedly interning gay men in concentration camps. After a three year period of dormancy, the accusations have resurfaced in a new feature-length documentary by HBO Films entitled Welcome to Chechnya.
4 September 2014 — Land Destroyer
Amid NATO’s failures in Ukraine, America’s terrorist mercenaries threaten war with Russia
As the crisis in Ukraine continues to fare poorly for Kiev and its NATO-backers, an “unlikely” ally has emerged – ISIS. Threatening to “liberate” Chechnya and the Caucasus, ISIS would essentially be handing over regions of Russia to its Western and Persian Gulf sponsors. While one would imagine the West would attempt to at least appear to stand in solidarity with Russia in the face of this recent threat, it has instead used the threat to stir fear among Russians, and as leverage against Moscow.
17 June 2013 — Strategic Culture Foundation
Many questions remain unanswered about the Boston Marathon Bombings that took place on April 15, 2013. Three people were killed and two hundred and sixty-four others were injured during the tragedy. Continue reading
13 May 2013 — Strategic Culture Foundation
It is now clear that the brothers Tamerlan and Dhokhar Tsarnaev were part of a joint Central Intelligence Agency – George Soros Open Society Institute (OSI) operation to launch terrorist attacks inside the Russian Caucasus region, primarily in Chechnya and Dagestan. Along the way, the Tsarnaevs appeared to have been diverted into conducting a «false flag» terrorist attack in Boston or were indoctrinated into Salafist beliefs by Saudi handlers. Such «blow back» events, if that was the case in Boston, is to similar events where the CIA’s. «Al Qaeda» allies have turned on their masters and conducted major attacks, such as that launched against the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya last September 11.
29 February 2012 — Stop NATO
10 February 2012 — Stop NATO
On January 30 President Barack Obama met with his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili in the Oval Office at the White House for an unprecedented private meeting between the heads of state, a tête-à-tête initiated by Washington.
15 July 2011 — Stop NATO
1 July 2011 — Stop NATO
5 February, 2011 — Strategic Culture Foundation
A Thaw in Kashmir or Shimmering Volcano?
04.02.2011 | 08:39 | MAHAPATRA Aurobinda (India)
Last year till the end of August, the Kashmir valley witnessed some of worst incidents in a decade with loss of more than hundred lives… The developments this year has further raised the issue whether peace in Kashmir will remain as fragile as it is, or there will be something spectacular as in the fashion of some north African Arab countries… Reportedly, the users of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in Kashmir have widely circulated the recent protests in Tunisia and Egypt…
more
9 March, 2010 — Global Research
Georgia is eager for another war, but there are other fires there which refuse to die — Russia’s battles with terrorism and separatists and Azerbaijans bleeding wound in ethnic Armenian Nagorno Karabakh.
The Russian Federation republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, North Ossetia and Ingushetia have experienced a sharp increase in assassinations and terrorist bombings in the past few years which have reached into the heart of Russia itself, most spectacularly with the bombing of the Moscow-Leningrad express train in January that killed 26.
Last week police killed at least six suspected militants in Ingushetia. Dagestan has especially suffered in the past two years, notably with the assassination of its interior minister in last June and the police chief last month. The number of armed attacks more than doubled last year. In February, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev replaced Dagestan president Mukhu Aliyev with Magomedsalam Magomedov, whose father Magomedali led Dagestan from 1987-2006. Aliyev was genuinely popular, praised for his honesty and fight against corruption, but was seen as too soft on terror.
2 March, 2010 — Eric Walberg
Will there be another war in the Caucasus? This is a smoldering issue on more than one front, finds Eric Walberg, in the first of a two-part analysis of the spectre of conflict in this crucial crossroads
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world expected a new era of peace and disarmament. But what happened? Instead of diminishing, US and NATO presence throughout Europe, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Central Asia rapidly increased, and the world experienced one war after another — in the Caucasus, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, each one hotter and more horrible than the last. And we are far from seeing the end to the savagery now unleashed by the anti-communist jinni.
Though a pokey backwater for the past millennium, the south Caucasus is now a key battleground, the “critical strategic crossroads in 21st century geopolitics”, writes analyst Rick Rozoff, the focus of ambitious energy transit projects and a military corridor reaching from Western Europe to East Asia, controlled (or not so “controlled”) from Washington and Brussel.
Surely peace in this vital region should be a paramount goal for both Russia and the West, for their own reasons — Russia because, well because it is there and its cultural and economic links are vital to Russia’s well being. The US, if only to benefit economically, since peace everywhere is a boon to economic well being and logically should be blessed by the world’s superpower, whether or not it is a benevolent one.
4 September, 2009 — Global Research
On August 21 the chief of the U.S. Marine Corps, General James Conway, arrived in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to begin the training of his host country’s military for deployment to the Afghan war theater under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
“During the meeting the sides discussed a broad spectrum of Georgian-U.S bilateral relations and the situation in Georgia’s occupied territory.”[1] Occupied territory(ies) meant Abkhazia and South Ossetia, now independent nations with Russian troops stationed in both.
Conway met with Georgian Defense Minister Davit (Vasil) Sikharulidze, who on the same day gave an interview to the Associated Press in which he said that the training provided by the U.S. Marine Corps could be employed, in addition to counterinsurgency operations in South Asia, in his country’s “very difficult security environment.”
Associated Press reported that “Asked if he was referring to the possibility of another war with Russia, he said, ‘In general, yes.'”
The Georgian defense chief added, “This experience will be important for the Georgian armed forces itself — for the level of training.”[2]
Sikharulidze was forced to retract his comments within hours of their utterance, and not because they weren’t true but because they were all too accurate. The Pentagon was not eager to have this cat be let out of the bag.
Three days later American military instructors arrived in Georgia on the heels of the visit of Marine Commandant Conway, whose previous campaigns included the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the first assault on Fallujah in that nation in 2004.
7 August, 2009 — Strategic Culture Foundation
Tensions were running high in the regions bordering Georgia’s breakaway republic of South Ossetia ahead of the first anniversary of the last year’s ‘five day war’. Soon after the checkpoints near the capital of Tskhinval were caught under fire, Russia’s Defence Ministry promised to take adequate measures to protect the citizens of the de facto republic of South Ossetia. According to Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin, ‘the Georgian authorities plotted various provocations ahead of the first anniversary of the war conflict in the Caucasus’. And those could be not just armed attacks on checkpoints but also ‘peaceful marches on the occupied territories’ (like it was in the beginning of the first war with South Ossetia under Gamsakhurdia).
The way Georgia reacted to the announcements made by the Russian Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs proves that Tbilisi aims to continue its active cooperation with the US and the EU on the issues of its domestic policy, although this approach led to hundreds of victims and large-scale destructions in Tskhinval last year. That bloody conflict also had a negative impact on what is called ‘Georgia’s territorial integrity’ (within the borders of the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic). Members of the EU mission confirmed that the truth was on the Georgian side, adding that the tone of statements made by the Russian side reminded them of the atmosphere just a few days before the last year’s war. In such a way the mission, headed by Ambassador Hansjoerg Haber, demonstrated its solidarity with Georgia…
7 August, 2009 — Strategic Culture Foundation
Following the break-up of the USSR and the armed conflicts of the early 1990s the situation in the South Caucasus followed the path that proved unfavourable to Russia. The United States and its allies started gaining a footing in the region and pursued a policy of gradually ousting Russia from the South and, in the future, also from the North Caucasus. Moscow pursued a laissez-faire policy, one that bore the imprint of defeatism and unjustified illusions about prospects for future cooperation with the West. The scale of the Russian Federation’s political, military and economic presence in the South Caucasus was steadily shrinking as a result.
The situation began changing in the first decade of the 21st century. The recent years seemed to suggest a radical revaluation of Russia’s policy on the Caucasus, as well as a quality-new character of that policy. Evidence of that was the Five-day war in August 2008, followed by a refusal to recognize as legitimate Georgia’s post-Soviet borders (that is the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic), by the official recognition of independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia on the 26th of August 2008, by concluding treaties of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance, on setting up two permanent Russian military bases in the two republics, on the joint protection of their borders etc.
4 July, 2009 – Asia Times Online
In the annals of Russian-American summitry, Moscow has never before choreographed a welcoming ceremony for the visiting United States president in this fashion. The dramatic run-up to the arrival of US President Barack Obama in Moscow on Monday underscores the complexities of the context in which the two countries are going through at the summit.
Russia has laid out its welcome carpet leading all the way from the rugged Caucasus, a theater of events that is interesting in the highest degree to US-Russia relations, to the Russian capital to receive Obama. It is a carpet of intriguing design, laden with compelling legends of the roots of conflict that acted as barriers to peaceful co-existence between the two powers, and the wisdom and valor of taking arms unseasonably without any unity of purpose.
Obama has only once been to Russia – on a US Congressional jaunt dominated by Richard Lugar. Yet, a statesman like Obama with an acute sense of history will not fail to take note of the excursion that awaits him next week. Washington is not amused. Vice President Joseph Biden has scheduled a visit to Ukraine and Georgia soon after the US-Russia summit in Moscow.
TMPress International Newswire
TMPress ™ – United News & Press Features
(TMPress International – New York – September 14, 2008) – As the picture becomes clearer to the EU/West despite the Russophobic media and the White House chastising of Russian intentions in the North Caucuses and the reality of newly Independent Republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia … it now appears very certain that Georgian President Saakashvili had long planned a military strike against the Russian Autonomous Regions to seize back the breakaway territory starting with South Ossetia, but executed it very poorly. This made it quite easy for Russia to retaliate and claim the ‘moral high ground’ … according to Saakashvili’s former defense minister until 2007.
Source: Strategic Culture Foundation
New talks on the settlement of the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia opened in Moscow on September 8, exactly one month after the massacre perpetrated by Georgian President M. Saakashvili, whom former German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Joschka Fischer had described as “the irresponsible fool from the Tbilisi presidential palace”. As decided at the snap EU Summit a week ago, the EU was represented by French President N. Sarkozy, French Foreign Minister B. Kouchner, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Russia was represented by Russian President D. Medvedev, Foreign Minister S. Lavrov, First Vice Prime Minister I. Shuvalov, and Aide to the President Sergey Prikhodko.
The agenda, though broadly known, reflected a surprisingly narrow-minded and biased thinking. The EU politicians with their unsophisticated vision seem unable even to identify – least to condemn – the actual aggressor. They cannot admit that the mad Tbilisi ruler who has sent Georgia’s NATO-sponsored army to South Ossetia and thus inflicted unprecedented disgrace on his country is in fact their creature.
August 26, 2008
Asia Times
It is time to seriously contemplate World War III. The most important elements are already in place. Just as so many experts on the Caucasus have predicted, the region has become a power keg and the main source of great-power rivalry.
Obviously, disagreements between great powers go far beyond this region and, in fact, conflicts and war in the Caucasus are rather insignificant in their grand games and calculations. Yet the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Russia all have important symbolic stakes there – there are promises to local players and fears that abandoning them might hurt reputation and global standing.
I didn’t want to post each article, rather, I’ve supplied links instead to what I regard as informative analysis and for a change, from a Russian perspective on the upheavals since Georgia’s insane attack on South Ossetia.
2008-09-05
Pyotr ISKENDEROV
The Serbian Front in the War Over the Caucasus
“At the moment, we are witnessing the onset of the third phase of the war over the Caucasus. In the nearest time, we should expect the West to make attempts to outplay Moscow in the energy business by complicating its involvement in key international oil and gas transit projects…”
2008-09-05
Georgia: the First Step Towards Chaos Control (II)
“In all likelihood, preparations for the second phase of the US operation aimed at destabilizing the post-Soviet space are underway. Its start is tentatively scheduled for September-October, 2008 and will probably be marked by a new Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, this time with the direct US support… At the same time, a provocation such as a murder of Russian sailors or a blow-up of a Russian warship will be organized in Sevastopol, the result being a civil war in Ukraine and a direct military conflict between the country and Russia…”
Impact of Five-Day War on Global Energy
The brief armed conflict in South Ossetia will have long-lasting and serious repercussions globally. The infrastructures of the energy sector have been particularly affected by the crisis. It is hard to say at the moment whether fundamental changes in the energy landscape of the Caspian and Middle East regions should be expected, but the immediate character of the reaction of exporters and transit countries shows that the military factor is bound to play a bigger role in assessing both individual energy projects and the potentials of entire regions in the global energy politics.
Georgia: the First Step Towards Chaos Control (I)
Over the past several weeks, the Russian-language expert community has published a number of worthy analytic papers addressing on a decent theoretical level practically the entire range of aspects of the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia as well as of the overall geopolitical and economic picture of the world transformed by the August, 2008 five-day war.
The West’s Monopoly on Injustice: the Conclusions of the EU Snap Summit By Elena PONOMAREVA
The date of the snap EU Summit which focused no so much on the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia as on condemning Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – September 1 – was truly symbolic. World War II began in 1939 also on September 1.
Future of State System By Aurobinda MAHAPATRA (India)
The developments in this year would likely generate a huge turning process in international political order. With the rise in aspirations of regions to get independent, their recognitions amidst contestations the state system vogue almost for three and half centuries has received a jolt, especially with the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia by Russia and earlier that of Kosovo.
Raiders in Action By Irina LEBEDEVA (USA)
The Soviet disunion, the fall of the communist regimes, and the dissolution of the Eastern bloc made the actual purpose of the existence of NATO obscenely obvious. NATO is an organization acting as the global raider.
Abkhazia: the Independence Paid For by Sufferings By Aleksander B. KRYLOV
“Russia has officially recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The extremely difficult 15-year-long period in the lives of the two Republics, during which they had to exist as unrecognized states, is over. Now their international status has changed fundamentally. Another no less obvious circumstance is that after Russia’s recognition of the two new countries the problems of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are no longer regional – for years to come, they are going to play an important role in the politics of global powers…”
The Long-Awaited Decision By Irina LEBEDEVA (USA)
“No serious comments were made by the major US media on August 25 when the Russian Parliament asked the Russian President to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. As for the Russian Parliament’s address to the Parliaments of UN countries and to international parliamentary organizations, in which Russia’s position concerning the Caucasus was detailed — it was ignored by the global media completely…”
Georgia’s Economy: myths and reality By Valerian Advadze (Georgia)
Once Georgia’s economy successfully integrated into the common Soviet system of production, it exported 26% of its products to other republics of the Soviet Union. At the same time, 28% of all goods consumed in Georgia were imported from outside. It means that Georgia was less autonomous than other republics.
Russia prefers diplomacy to conflict and seeks alliances with the West and its neighbors. The United States wants conquest – the Eurasian vastness with its huge oil, gas and other resources.
Prior to entering WW II, US strategists had a clear aim in mind at its conclusion – to hold unchallengeable power in a new post-war global system: military, economic and political in a ‘Grand Area’ encompassing the West and Far East. Essentially most parts outside the communist bloc and exploiting it under disarming rhetoric like being ‘selfless advocates of freedom for colonial peoples (and an) enemy of imperialism.’ Championing ‘world peace (also) through multinational control.’
The New Dark Age 