ATTACKING OSSETIA IS ATTACKING RUSSIA!
Guriya Murklinskaya

533
09.08.2008

Attacking South Ossetia is synonymous to attacking the entire
republic of Ossetia (whatever any one could say, Ossetians in the
north enjoy the sovereignty of the Russian Federation), is a tragic
but not unexpected happening. Under the puppet regime of Saakashvili
Georgia has no choice.

There is another question that is much more important and
complicated. The question is: does the Russian "elite" have its
freedom of choice?

What would be supreme for the working out of Moscow’s line of conduct
regarding the war on South Ossetia. Will that be the fear of Russian
bureaucracy at all levels of losing what they have stolen and hidden
in offshore companies (because the US State Department knows about
"the stashes" of Russian ruling circles abroad, and it can at any
one time freeze their bank accounts) or the continuity of defence of
Russia’s strategic national interests? The very first steps of top
Russian leaders imbue hope that they would develop the second scenario.

An unequivocal and responsible statement needs to be made to the effect
that the attack on Ossetia was an attack on Russia! There are people
who suggest that Ossetia should be helped by volunteers and arms,
but that is what needed to be done earlier, in Yugoslavia. It was
not done! And now we are asking th e US on our bended knees not to
deploy their silo-hidden missiles too close to our borders. It was
not accidental that they directed the ruler of Georgia to Ossetia,
counting it as a weak link whose geography could provoke a blitzkrieg
to snatch – first South Ossetia – in a matter of hours counting on
Moscow’s non-interference and ritual protests. But it did not turn out
that way. As Dmitry Medvedev said, the people of the multinational
North Caucasus support the Ossetian nation. These are exactly the
conditions for the support of volunteers and arms, but the first thing
that needs to be done is to declare Russia’s military presence in
the zone of this military conflict to be able to rebuff the aggressor.

The Georgian attack on Ossetia was an attempt to use Georgian hands
and knives to grab another piece of Russia’s geopolitical space for
the Yankees to swallow. The transformation of large geopolitical
territories in the process of NATO’s eastward "expansion" is
painful. The tragedy of Ossetia is part of a story that a number of
republics existing on the territory of the former USSR that are de
facto independent but formally unacknowledged by the international
community need to be protected both against ethnic violence in the
interests of people living in these states and for the purpose of
not making them tools of a large-scale geopolitical destabilization
of the Russian Federation.

Following the dismemberment of the USSR that crowned the four
decades of the "cold war" virtually all the post-Soviet states,
except Russia began to orient themselves at a rapid violent
assimilation of small non-autochthonal ethnic groups and the
building of mono-national and mono-confessional states. The issue
of acknowledgment /non-acknowledgment of Abkhazia, South Ossetia
and other de facto states on the territory of the former USSR is not
an issue within the framework of the policies of unification of the
global geopolitical space – these states will be recognized! The only
question is who will recognize them first -Russia or the West?

There is an almost open current threat of destabilisation of Russia’s
southern territories should it enter the "non-permitted" zone around
the unrecognized post-Soviet republics. Western strategists agree to
give Moscow the role of showing itself as a state that is incapable of
protecting its citizens allowing Western states to have the final say
about the fates of Abkhazians, Ossetians and other Russia’s nations.

Speaking purely in terms of state borders, many Caucasian peoples,
including Armenians, Azeris, some ethnic groups in Dagestan were
divided after the fall of the USSR There are also nations divided
by the administrative borders of the "subjects" of the Russian
Federation. Should Russia lose a war in the North Caucasus,20all the
administrative borders would become null and void. After that NATO
member-states would re-distribute limitrophe territories, and highly
likely that the Caucasus would become a Turkish protectorate.

Could Georgia profit from a war? Undoubtedly, no unless destruction in
a war mincing-machine a sizeable number of unemployed young people and
inadequately trained youths whom Saakashvili has sent to recruiting
stations is the current Tbilisi regime’s victory.

No state that is currently responsible for the issue of the future
of the failed Georgian state is currently interested to support it
where retention of Georgia’s "territorial integrity" and "national
sovereignty" within the borders of the former Georgian Soviet Socialist
Republic is concerned. Should there be a big scuffle, Georgia would be
torn in pieces to become a formation of small mono-ethnic semi-states
that would be grabbed by the victors.

Time is probably ripe for the Georgians to realize for whom they
fight their battles.