August 12:
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Moscow will agree to peace with Georgia if it removes its troops far beyond South Ossetia’s borders and signs a legally binding promise not to attack the breakaway region, Reuters reports. Lavrov’s comments follow word that President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have agreed on principles aimed at halting the conflict, including ceasefire, a pledge to renounce force, free passage for humanitarian aid and the withdrawal of troops to their bases. Lavrov said Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s pledge not to attack South Ossetia is insufficient and that “a legally binding treaty on the non-use of force” must be signed.
Reuters quotes an anonymous senior U.S. defense official as saying that the United States has canceled a naval exercise with Russia in protest over Moscow’s military operations in Georgia. Meanwhile, Georgia’s Security Council says it has filed papers with the International Court of Justice to sue Russia for ethnic cleansing, National Public Radio reports.
August 13:
An Associated Press correspondent in Georgia has described fifty Russian army trucks and armored personnel carriers traveling down a highway toward the Georgian capital Tbilisi, “making it clear that a day-old cease-fire would not keep Russia from moving freely through Georgia.” While Russian soldiers in the convoy said their destination was Tbilisi, the convoy halted and set up camp about an hour’s drive from the Georgian capital. Meanwhile, Sky News reports that a column of Russian tanks was seen heading from the Georgian city of Gori in the direction of Tbilisi “amid reports killing and looting was taking place.” The British TV channel quotes Georgian Deputy Interior Minister Eka Zguladze as rejecting reports that Russian forces were heading towards Tbilisi.
August 14:
Russia’s armed incursion into Georgia has “wiped away any pretense that President Dmitry Medvedev runs the country,” the Washington Post writes. The newspaper quotes Alexander Golts, deputy editor of Yezhednevny Zhurnal (Daily Journal), as noting that when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin returned to Moscow from Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, near the war zone, he was shown on television telling Medvedev what to do. “It was not a private conversation,” Golts said. “Putin wanted to show that he was in charge. Everybody was shocked.”
The Financial Times, meanwhile, reports that the Georgian incursion marks a “brutal end” to the hopes that Medvedev would “steer his country down a more liberal, pro-western path.” The British newspaper quotes Olga Kryshtanovskaya, an expert on Russia’s political elite at the Academy of Sciences, as saying: “Putin takes the decisions and Medvedev repeats his words. He is like a schoolboy who repeats his teacher.”
South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity has told a Moscow news conference that the foreign ministers of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will arrive in the Russian capital on August 15th to begin work on winning international recognition of the two breakaway Georgian enclaves’ independence, NEWSru.com reports. Abkhazia’s leader, Eduard Kokoity, told the same news conference that “the quicker the countries of Europe recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the quicker the situation in the Caucasus will stabilize.” Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has declared that the world “can forget about” Georgia’s territorial integrity, the Associated Press reports.
August 15:
Moscow’s Presnensky District Court has barred TNK-BP chief executive Robert Dudley from office for two years for failure to obey instructions of the State Labor Inspectorate. As the Moscow Times notes, a consortium of Russian billionaire shareholders in the 50-50 joint venture with BP have repeatedly called for Dudley’s removal, saying he has mismanaged the company in favor of BP’s interests.
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