RUSSIAN ARMOR SENT INTO GEORGIA
August 8th, 2008It’s war.
What will NATO do now???
Via: Telegraph:
Russia sent troops and dozens of tanks into the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia today, throwing the two former Soviet neighbours into a sudden yet undeclared state of war.
In the most serious regional crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, at least 50 tanks – and possibly many more – rumbled through the Roki tunnel, which cuts through the Caucasus mountains separating South Ossetia from the Russian province of North Ossetia.
“One hundred and fifty Russian tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles have entered South Ossetia,” President Saakashvili of Georgia told reporters in Tbilisi. “This is a clear intrusion on another country’s territory. We have Russian tanks on our territory, jets on our territory in broad daylight.”
Mr Saakashvili added that Georgian forces had downed two Russian jet fighters over Georgian territory.
What will NATO do? Hang the poor SOBs out to dry, most likely.
from Bloomberg:
The conflict “absolutely” dooms Georgia’s chances for North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership, said Robert Hunter, U.S. ambassador to the Brussels-based alliance under President Bill Clinton and now a senior adviser at the policy- research group RAND Corp. in Washington. “You don’t bring in a country that has this sort of trouble.”
Yeah. Because NATO’s all about keeping the neighbors happy, not, y’know, defending Europe against Soviet aggression. Russian aggression? Bah. Not in the charter. Who cares. Cheap energy, blah blah blah.
Fascinating timing on this one, though. Medvedev’s only been in “office” how long, and especially launching this at the start of the Beijing Olympics is interesting.