The big news of the week, rather surprisingly, wasn’t the Olympic Games. However, the media still found time to complain about the Chinese government. On the local front, Labor managed to hang on in the Northern Territory, Federal Labor actually made a decision, and Peter Costello waited some more for his book launch.
Most of the former Soviet republic’s military forces are locked up in fighting around the other breakaway region of South Ossetia, where Georgian forces had earlier resumed shelling of the enclave’s capital Tskhinvali. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said Russia was seeking to occupy all of Georgia.
The former Soviet satellites have been left in no doubt that Russia must be regarded as “glavniy”, or No. 1, if they wish to avoid the fate of Georgia. Central to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s nationalistic policy is a conviction that the power of the West - seemingly unassailable at the end of the Cold War - is on the wane.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said late yesterday that Russian tanks were on Georgian territory outside South Ossetia and Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said a “massive” aerial bombardment of the central Georgian city Gori was taking place.
Georgia’s Interior Ministry said that Russia had built up large forces in Abkhazia and South Ossetia — breakaway regions that have support from Moscow — including 300 artillery pieces in South Ossetia alone. Russian forces, a spokesman said, were also poised just over the border at Larsi, where they could open a third line of attack.
Russia backs the separatist government in South Ossetia and sent in tanks and troops on Friday in response to pro-Western Georgia’s military offensive to take back the province, which broke away in the early 1990s after a separatist war.
Neither side showed any indication of backing down. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia declared that “war has started,” and President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia accused Russia of a “well-planned invasion” and mobilized Georgia’s military reserves.