According to Georgian officials and scattered news reports, Russian soldiers and South Ossetian paramilitaries have marched into the Georgian city of Gori. This comes one day after a truce was made by both nations to put an end to the six-day war that has killed many and uprooted thousands.
“Russia has treacherously broken its word,” said Georgia’s Security Council chief Alexandre Lomaia. Georgian officials also said that Gori was looted and bombed by the Russians, though the latter denies this claim.
An Associated Press (AP) reporter witnessed dozens of tanks and military vehicles leaving Gori in a southeast direction. One Russian soldier jokingly said to a photographer, “Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi!” Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia.
A CNN crew observed thousands of Georgian troops packing up and leaving Gori at high speed. Georgia has said it was recalling the troops to defend Tbilisi. According to the AP, a BBC reporter witnessed Russian tanks in the streets of Gori, while South Ossetians were seizing Georgian cars and looting homes.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has stated that he thinks the Western response to this situation has been inadequate. “I feel that they are partly to blame,” he said. “Not only those who commit atrocities are responsible … but so are those that fail to react.”
A Russian ministry of defense official told Interfax that Russian troops were in Senaki to “prevent attacks by Georgian military units against South Ossetia.”
“To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe and other nations and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis,” US president George W. Bush said.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, responded to the US statement by calling Georgia “a special project of the United States. And we understand that the United States is worried about its project.”
At the United Nations, Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Russia would not sign a French-drafted cease-fire resolution. “We will look at the draft and try to bring it to a standard where it can play a role in this,” Churkin said.
Backgrounder
Georgia is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and partially in Southwest Asia in the Caucasus region. It is bordered to the north by the Russian Federation, to the east by Azerbaijan, to the west across the Black Sea by Ukraine, to the south by Armenia and to the southwest by Turkey. The territory of Georgia covers 69,700 km² and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Georgia’s population excluding Abkhazia and the Tsinkvali region is 4.4 million, nearly 84% of whom are ethnic Georgians.
Two ancient Georgian states were the Kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia. The latter, one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion early in the 4th century, subsequently provided a nucleus around which the unified Kingdom of Georgia was formed early in the 11th century. After a period of political, economic and cultural flourishing, this kingdom went into decline in the 13th century and eventually fragmented into several kingdoms and principalities in the 16th century. The three subsequent centuries of Ottoman and Persian hegemony were followed by a piecemeal absorption into the Russian Empire in the 19th century. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years were marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis. Georgia began to gradually stabilize in 1995, and achieved more effective functioning of state institutions following a bloodless change of power in the so-called Rose Revolution of 2003. However, Georgia continues to suffer from the unresolved secessionist conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Relations with Russia remain tense over these issues as well as Georgia’s aspiration of NATO membership. In early August 2008, Georgia was engaged in armed conflict with separatists and the state of Russia.
Georgia is a representative democracy, organized as a secular, unitary, semi-presidential republic. It is currently a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization, the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, and GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development. The country seeks to join NATO and, in the longer term, accession to the European Union.
