Georgia

Russian forces have moved further into Georgia's rebellious province of South Ossetia, despite Georgia's call for a ceasefire. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ran for cover, saying Russian planes were flying over the presidential palace in his capital city. Russia's Prime Minister Putin has flown home from the Olympics, but President Bush was still in Beijing when he denounced Russia's "disproportionate" response” to explosive hostilities in the region. We catch up with events and get the background on a long running local dispute with international implications. What are… more

Many factors are involved in the present conflict but the central one is straightforward: the majority of the Ossetes living south of the main Caucasus range in Georgia wish to unite with the Ossetes living to the north, in an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation; and the Georgians, regarding South Ossetia as both a legal and an historic part of their national territory, refuse to accept this.

Twice in the past century, when the empire to the north weakened and Georgia declared its independence, the… more

Former Senior Director at the National Security Council and current Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, Flynt Leverett, discusses how President Bush should handle Russia's invasion of Georgia, a U.S. ally. LINK to video

I was in Georgia as a stringer for The Times (London) when the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict first erupted at the end of 1990, in the context of the gathering decay of the Soviet Union. I must say that I never could have imagined then that this obscure dispute would one day hold the potential for creating a major international crisis.

This conflict has its roots in three factors: First is the desire of the Southern Ossetes, who up until 1990 formed an autonomous region of the Georgian Soviet… more