2 Responses to Merkel‘s camp, keep your hands far from Russia! »»

1. mmisso
   Comment by mmisso | 2008/08/15 at 13:21:19

   Source of information: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLD478001

2. eslaporte
   Comment by eslaporte | 2008/08/15 at 14:25:14

   Yes, the European Union should not only press ahead with efforts at a privileged partnership with Russia, it should use this crisis to further its relationship with Russia. There should be no talk of sanctions and the like, as this could be counter productive.

   The reality is that Saakashvili started this conflict by attacking the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. Russian peacekeepers were killed. The response of Russia was expected and even required.

   The notion that Russia “can never acquire European values” is just plain short sited – and these comments were once said about Serbia. These comments are no longer said about Serbia – and a look at Serbia’s 2006 constitution shows use that Serbia has, indeed acquired European values.

   Now – it is in keeping with the peaceful intentions of the European project to avoid sanctions, and other punitive measure, against Russia and keep up the privileged partnership. It is Georgia that is in need of work to get it up to speed on European values!

   QUOTE: The Kremlin made abundantly clear that it would view Kosovo’s independence without Serbian consent and a U.N. Security Council mandate as a precedent for the two Georgian de facto independent enclaves. Furthermore, while President Saakashvili was making obvious his ambition to reconquer Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Moscow was both publicly and privately warning that Georgia’s use of force to reestablish control of the two regions would meet a tough Russian reaction, including, if needed, air strikes against Georgia proper.
   So it would be interesting to know what President Saakashvili was thinking when, on Thursday night, after days of relatively low-level shelling around the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali (which both South Ossetians and Georgians blamed on each other), and literally hours after he announced on state-controlled TV the cessation of hostilities, he ordered a full-scale assault on Tskhinvali. And mind you, the assault could only succeed if the Georgian units went right through the battalion of Russian troops serving as international peacekeepers according to agreements signed by Tbilisi itself in the 1990s.
   The Washington Note – Guest Post by DIMITRI SIMES: “What Exactly Did Saakashvili Think Would Happen?” (http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/08/guest_post_by_d_1/

   From the Times-Online, by Michael Evans, Defence Editor (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4500160.ece )
   QUOTE: “Georgia’s attempt to seize control of the secessionist South Ossetia region has been a gamble too far, reckless in its timing and founded on a fundamental misjudgment.
   The military adventure had all the hallmarks of rushed planning and a fingers-crossed strategy, launched in the hope and expectation that the Russians would not react, but that if they did, the Americans and Georgia’s other Nato friends would come to his aid in one form or another” (“Georgia: Reckless Saakashvili took on Russian Goliath Putin”).

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