Headline from an English-language Russian news site.

Worldfocus producer Christine Kiernan writes about the reaction to the recently-released report on the Russia-Georgia war.

This week, the European Union released its long-awaited report on the five-day-war that broke out between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. The conclusions — the result of a ten-month-long mission to investigate the conflict’s origins led by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini — were mixed. The report cites as the immediate cause “the shelling by Georgian forces of the capital of the secessionist province of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, on Aug. 7.”

However, it also acknowledges that Russia had made preparations for armed hostilities by moving paramilitary forces into the Russian-backed republic, and that the shelling was only the “culminating point of a long period of increasing tensions, provocations, and incidents.” The report concludes that all sides violated international humanitarian and human rights laws and warns that the conflict in Georgia continues to threaten peace in the region.

Not surprisingly, both Russia and Georgia seemed to interpret the report’s findings in their own favor. Russian officialdom and media expressed satisfaction, more or less, over the commission’s findings, highlighting as the main conclusion the fact that Georgia started the war. The Russian press secretary said “we can only welcome the said conclusion.”

A headline in the “Gazeta” newspaper read: “The Russian Kremlin and Ministry of Defense welcomed the EU commission’s conclusion that Georgia began the war in South Ossetia.” The article noted that Russia’s ambassador to the European Commission, Vladimir Chizhov, deemed the report  “Pro-Russian.” Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said it was about time the truth came out; the Echo Moscow radio station quoted him as saying Western politicians owed Russia an apology.

You can read an official reaction on the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Web site. There is little mention of the finding of Russian responsibility for ethnic cleansing and of disproportionate use of force by the Russian side, or the report’s refusal to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent entities.

My ability to interpret Georgian reaction is limited. But I did come across an English-language version of an official statement issued by the Georgian government. The Georgian government’s takeaway: “Almost all of the facts in the report confirm the Georgian version of events.” The government’s statement failed to mention that the EU mission put responsibility for the immediate commencement of shelling on Georgia. Instead, it stressed the report’s finding that Georgian civilians and peacekeepers were under attack, on Georgian soil, before August 7, and cited the “most important fact documented by the Commission [...] that regular armed Russian forces and mercenaries illegally crossed into Georgia before August 8, 2009.”

Will the report’s release change anything? Probably not. Both Russia and Georgia will continue to adhere to their own version of events and blame the other side. My main takeaway comes from an editorial written by mission-head Tagliavini and published in Wednesday’s New York Times. In it, she focuses not on “whodunit;” instead, she raises the question of what responsibility the international community bears for failing to prevent the conflict. Are there actions Georgia’s and Russia’s neighbors could have taken to avoid the escalation of tensions? Did the involvement of outside powers harden positions, as Tagliavini claims, rather than build common ground? What is the role of the international community at large in deterring conflicts that arise between nation-states? Perhaps it is questions like these that merit further investigation.

- Christine Kiernan

A man overlooks damage in Gori, Georgia. Photo: Onnik Krikorian

On Friday, Russia and Georgia marked the first anniversary of the war that erupted a year ago.

Last summer, Georgia launched an attack on the breakaway republic of South Ossetia to drive out Russian-backed separatists. Russia responded with a massive counterattack, pushing deep into Georgian territory.

The five-day war killed at least 390 people, displaced tens of thousands and left fear that more fighting could erupt. Tensions between the countries are still running high, with both sides making accusations about the other.

Ivan Krastev is based in Sofia, Bulgaria, and is the editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian edition of Foreign Policy. He writes at OpenDemocracy about the lasting political fallout from the brief conflict for Russia, Georgia, Europe and the U.S.

It took less than a hundred days for the Russia-Georgia war of 8-12 August 2008 to be eclipsed as a history-shaping event. The guns of August were silenced by the thunders on Wall Street. A war that seemed momentous at the time became subject to instant amnesia: a non-event. But it was a non-event with consequences.

A year on, a measure of these consequences seems appropriate. The post-war balance-sheets of the leading actors - Georgia and Russia themselves, but also the United States and the European Union - in many respects resemble those of the Wall Street financial institutions hit by the global economic crisis: undeclared losses and inflated profits.

Indeed, amid the fallout of this toxic conflict it is easier to see losers than victors. In August 2008, Georgia lost its dreams, the Kremlin lost its complexes, Washington lost its nerves and the European Union lost its sleep. But as the poet said, there’s no success like failure; and the messy aftermath also reveals collateral benefits for some of these and other powers.

Russia is at the centre of every calculation. The war was the occasion of Moscow’s first large-scale military operation outside the territory of the Russian Federation since the end of the cold war. The Kremlin’s subsequent recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was the first revision of inter-state borders on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Russia emerged from the war as a revisionist power and broke the illusion of the existence of European order.

[...] In assessing the consequences of the Russia-Georgia war the real question is: does the post-August 2008 world giving us a better chance for negotiating a legitimate and just European order, or is it making such a order even less likely?

Two answers are possible: the desperately pessimistic or the moderately optimistic.

Pessimists will claim that by turning the Russia-Georgia war into a non-event the west has encouraged the Kremlin to repeat its “success” in other parts of the post-Soviet space - thus making European order an illusion.

Optimists tend to believe that the Russia-Georgia war marks the simultaneous failure of two projects: Russia’s for reviving sphere-of-influence politics in Europe, and the west’s for constructing Europe without Russia.

If the pessimists are right, these are the early stages of a long night. If the optimists are correct, the death of these two projects means that now is a proper time to start thinking about the gestation of a third.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo and article available under a Creative Commons license.

The Georgian government initially blamed the mutiny on Russia, saying they are trying to disrupt NATO exercises in Georgia set to begin on Wednesday. 

Lincoln Mitchell, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Afairs, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the significance of the events to Georgian and international politics and how they may relate to NATO exercises.

Demonstrators in front of the parliament building during a protest rally in Tbilisi.

Mass protests against Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili have failed to gain traction, unlike the “Rose Revolution” of 2003 that put Saakashvili in power. Back then, Saakashvili’s supporters carried flowers — today, his opponents throw cabbages and carrots.

Matthew Collin reports for Al Jazeera from Georgia, and writes in the “Frontline Club” blog to explore why the protesters’ message is not resonating this time.

‘Cabbage Revolution’ Wilts

Under stony skies, a dirge-like ballad droned from the speakers outside the Georgian parliament: an appropriate soundtrack for the seventh day of opposition protests in Tbilisi. A series of opposition leaders was greeted by polite applause as they raged against Mikheil Saakashvili, the president who has refused to offer them his head on a pike. It started to drizzle; those who had umbrellas raised them. “All Georgia is here!” declared one optimist from the stage. It was not. These few thousand, or a good proportion of them, were the opposition’s hardcore perennials; the people we’ve become accustomed to seeing time and again at protests here down the years – the unemployed, the pensioners, the dispossessed and the desperate, chewing on sunflower seeds, spitting the husks, and smoking.

Despite what the Moscow propaganda channel Russia Today is saying today (“Sleepless nights for Mikheil Saakashvili”), the president has weathered the initial threat of political destabilisation, although – this being Georgia, where politics is often like theatre, played out on the street – there will undoubtedly be more to come in the future. In a small country with big problems, the next crisis is always around the corner…

Why has the opposition so far failed to rock the Saakashvili regime to its foundations, to send him running like the ‘scared rabbit’ they accused him of being as they lobbed carrots and cabbages over the gates of his presidential palace? Many analysts are marking this failure down to superior state strategy and cunning – the decision to let the demonstrators rally wherever they wanted, and not send in the riot police to crack heads, as Saakashvili did in November 2007, shattering his Western media image as democracy’s US-educated honour student.

The low-key policing massively reduced the chance of violent confrontation; a brief late-night altercation at the weekend showed how quickly tempers could flare. The president and his advisers seemed to be hoping that people would simply get bored and go home if there were no ‘provocations’ to stoke their ire and passion, and so far, that is exactly what seems to have happened.

Some correspondents have also suggested that a significant number of Georgians simply don’t trust the opposition - a fragile and sometimes fractious alliance of liberal democrats, belligerent nationalists, conservatives and street-corner populists - to do any better at running Georgia than Saakashvili. Some of the current opposition alliance are former regime insiders who’ve defected and now despise their former boss and all his works (which of course they once praised); others are the kind of veteran authority-baiters who would probably demonstrate against themselves if they ever came to power.

But that’s not the whole story; there is significant level of discontent here, as a Gallup opinion poll today suggests, but there’s also a sense of fatigue; weariness with the constant political turmoil of the past couple of years – street rallies, then elections; street rallies, then more elections; more street rallies, then the war with Russia, and now street rallies again… For some people, even if they have grievances with this regime, there has simply been too much politics recently.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user gipajournos under a Creative Commons license.

After months of growing tension, the war began in August of last year when Georgia sent troops to retake the disputed region of South Ossetia. Russia responded with a counterstrike in South Ossetia and moved further into Georgia, a reaction the U.S. called “disproportionate” at the time. The conflict came to a conclusion by the end of the month with a cease-fire.

The action movie, set to air on Sunday, is shot in the style of the Bourne trilogy and tells the tale of an American entomologist and a Russian journalist who “unintentionally capture evidence that Georgia started the conflict using a special camera night lens as they attempt to film rare night butterflies,” Reuters reports.

Watch a trailer of the film below:

Blogger Sean at “Sean’s Russia Blog” reacts to the trailer:

Judging from the trailer, I doubt it’s really a “work of art” and certainly can’t be compared to Apocalypse Now but more a way to keep the Russian public’s political passions alive via shaky cameras, big explosions, and sappy melodrama. I won’t be tuning in of course, but I am curious about viewers reactions, if any.

Nathan Hodge at Wired’s “Danger Room” blog argues that Russian film propaganda is a far cry from what it once was:

This kind of clunky propaganda shows how far things have gone in Russia. Compare “Olympus Inferno” with, say, “Prisoner of the Mountains,” a phenomenal movie made during the first Chechen War. As legend has it, this powerful film helped persuade Russian President Boris Yeltsin to sign a peace treaty with the Chechens in 1996.

The “South Ossetia War” blog writes that the film will have political implications as Russians and Georgians try to pinpoint blame:

The political message of the film is obviously going to be quite important. The repercussions of last summer’s war are still being felt in both Russia and Georgia. The Russian media have been carrying reports that Russian draftee soldiers were not paid for their time serving in South Ossetia. Meanwhile, protests coming up on April 9 in Georgia are clearly going to be very dangerous for Mikheil Saakashvili’s government, and some highly suspicious arrests of the opposition have been going on in recent days that might seem more suited to neighbouring countries like Azerbaijan.

[...]While the Russians go ahead with the propaganda film (and the episode in the trailer where a wild-eyed Georgian soldier is running with a cocked pistol and screaming madly suggests it will certainly be propaganda), and the Georgians continue to cry about their scary imperialist neighbour and claim that last year’s war was a brave defensive response to invasion of their territory, sensible outside observers will surely continue to ignore both dodgy versions of events. As so often in international relations, the truth is surely that both sides behaved appallingly.

Indeed, the European Union has launched an inquiry into the outbreak of war, as Judah Grunstein at “World Politics Review” explains:

The more the EU digs into the outbreak of last August’s Russia-Georgia War, the worse things look for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. According to Der Spiegel, the paper trail seems to be leading back to Order No. 2, from Aug. 7, which the Russians claim to have intercepted, and which allegedly spoke of re-establishing “constitutional order” in the region. The formula was repeated word for word by a Georgian general, also on Aug. 7. Georgia, meanwhile, refuses to turn over the document in question, calling it a “state secret.”

Blogger Matthew Collin in Georgia compares that country’s media to Russia’s:

While a lot of television reporting in Georgia is pro-government, it’s clear that there is much more open criticism of the authorities on national television than is ever allowed in Russia, or in most other former Soviet states. But the idea of a genuinely free and independent media has been slow to take root here. Georgia’s radical opposition, for example, seems to believe that free media simply means more airtime for their opinions (they recently demanded that an entire channel be handed over to them), rather than any kind of independent scrutiny of politicians on all sides. Meanwhile, investigative reporting has been marginalised. Two independent studios do produce documentaries examining official corruption and miscarriages of justice, but they are not shown on national TV.

Georgia announced on Wednesday that it will pull out of the contest after refusing to choose a different song or change the lyrics of its entry, the disco-funk song “We don’t wanna put in.”

Considered a swipe at Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin over the five-day war between Russia and Georgia last August, the tune ran into trouble because of rules against political lyrics and was disqualified.

Watch a video of the song from YouTube user EurovisionPL:

Blogger “Anna Ershova,” a Russian student at Yale University, weighs in on Georgia’s pop protest:

I can see why the Georgians are so tongue-in-cheek regarding their behemoth neighbor, but that’s a petty way to deliver a protest, isn’t it? Georgia, if you are still mad over Abkhazia and Ossetia, go to a court of law, not the performance stage.

Russia’s own entrant to the contest has created a separate debate. Ukrainian singer Anastasia Prikhodko was selected on Tuesday to represent Russia after she had been disqualified from Ukraine’s contest.

Andy Young blogs at “Siberian Light” about her song, “Mamo,” and the uproar it is causing:

The controversy?  Well, Prikhodko is Ukrainian, and Mamo is sung partly in Russian and partly in - gasp - Ukrainian. Oh yes, and Prikhodko only entered the Russian qualification contest after she’d been kicked out of the Ukrainian qualification contest.The biggest complaints about Prikhodko’s victory came, not too surprisingly, from Yusif Prigozhin the husband of the singer who finished second. “It’s a disgrace… A song performed in Ukrainian can’t have anything to do with Russia.”

Finally, singer Mira Awad will be the first Arab to represent Israel in the song contest. She is slated to perform a duet in Arabic, Hebrew and English with Israeli Jewish singer Achinoam Nini.

The news has been criticized by Arab artists in the wake of the Gaza conflict, and the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has called on Awad to refuse to participate in the contest:

To represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest will serve to polish the international image of an aggressive occupying state that has long been engaged in ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It will communicate to the rest of the world that Israel’s war crimes and violations of international law are acceptable to us as Palestinians! [...] You may feel that it is important for you to represent Israel to demonstrate the full spectrum of Israeli society, which includes Palestinians living in Israel. This is utterly misguided. Until Palestinians living within Israel have full rights and do not suffer systemic discrimination and violation of their human and political rights, Israel has no right to portray itself as a healthy, multicultural society.

Vladimir Lensky, the New York bureau chief for Russia’s Channel One television, discusses how NATO’s decision will be received in Russia, the possibility of a deal between President Obama and Russian President Medvedev and how economic conditions are affecting Russia’s foreign policy. 

Con Coughlin of “The Telegraph” argues in his blog that Russia must take further steps to show its willingness to restore relations:

Russia’s decision to renew cooperation with Nato is a welcome development, but Moscow needs to demonstrate it is genuine about having a proper dialogue with its European partners.

Until the collapse of the Russian economy, Moscow had been taking an increasingly belligerent attitude towards its European neighbours, resuming nuclear bomber flights over the North Sea and threatening to site ballistic missiles along the borders of its East European neighbours.

[...]But the collapse of the Russian economy has clearly made the Kremlin think again, and after Nato initially cut all cooperation with Moscow in retaliation for Russia’s military offensive against Georgia last summer, it is good to see the Russians taking the first, faltering steps towards restoring relations with the West.[...]Nato needs Russia to be a key ally at a time when it faces so many other, more alarming, security threats throughout the rest of the world.

A blogger at “Defense of the Republic” argues that NATO’s decision reflects weakness in the face of Russian aggression:

Would you have guessed that NATO would cave and resume relations with Russia? Well, it’s coming, just a few months after the Georgia invasion by Russia, the Europeans are playing nice again. Do you feel comforted by the fact that no one in the world now seems willing to confront aggression?

Katrina Vanden Heuvel of “The Nation” argues that a true “fresh start” will not occur without a fundamental change in American mindset about Russia:

But resetting the relationship with Russia — as both President Obama and Vice President Biden have indicated a desire to do — [...]demands an end to the triumphalist thinking that has defined the U.S. mindset and strut since the end of the Cold War. President Obama and some on his team seem to be on the road to understanding how vital this shift is.

[...]There will not be a fundamental change or reset of US-Russian relations — no real partnership — until there is new American thinking about Russia.

Demonstrations at the Georgian Embassy in Yerevan. Photo: Onnik Krikorian

Georgia has detained two ethnic Armenians on charges of espionage. In the past, some of the ethnic Armenians who largely populate Georgia’s Samtskhe-Javakheti region have complained of poor treatment or gotten into conflicts with police.

Onnik Krikorian is a freelance photojournalist and writer from the United Kingdom based in Yerevan, Armenia. He writes at the “Frontline Club” about attending a protest in Armenia’s capital and discusses what the anger means for regional relations with both Georgia and Russia. 

Demonstration outside Georgian Embassy

To be honest, I hadn’t particularly planned on attending today’s demonstration staged outside the Georgian Embassy in Yerevan to protest the detention of two ethnic Armenian activists in Georgia’s Samtskhe Javakheti region – or rather, I was in two minds about doing so. To begin with, a friend in town from Tbilisi told me on Saturday that the region could hardly be considered a hotbed of separatist nationalism seeking autonomy or unification with Armenia, a sentiment also shared by a foreign journalist based in the Georgian capital. 

True, socio-economic conditions aren’t particularly good either, but that’s pretty much the case for most ethnic Georgian or Azerbaijani-populated regions in the country as well as pretty much anywhere outside the center of Yerevan, the Armenian capital. Nevertheless, after a phone call from one of those publicizing various other protests staged outside the Embassy informing me that the demonstration had been rescheduled for three hours later than originally planned, I jumped in a taxi and headed downtown.

Perhaps the main reason for going was to see how many people turned up. My taxi driver, for example, had heard about the protest on Radio Free Europe’s broadcast the day before and guessed why I was heading there. However, he seemed quite concerned that blockaded by Turkey and Azerbaijan, problems between Yerevan and Tbilisi would be the end of Armenia. With over 70 percent of the country’s trade going through Georgia, and still at war with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, he had a point.

As it was, about 100 people turned up, a third of which were reporters — an unnaturally high level of media interest for a demonstration which could hardly attract more than 70 people mainly from Samtskhe-Javakheti, a region populated by a little over 100,000 ethnic Armenians (54 percent of its total population). What was also notable was that while some did hold up plackards of the two detained activists charged with espionage, most seemed more interested in screaming out “Javakhk,” the Armenian name for the region.

Staging the demonstration in Yerevan also raises a few questions as to why it wasn’t held in Tbilisi. Some argue that it could be for internal political consumption a few days before the first anniversary of the 1 March post-election clashes in the Armenian capital during which 10 people died, or to whip up emotions among the population which would indirectly lead to the rejection of any normalization of ties with Turkey and a possible future settlement of the Karabakh conflict. It could also directy lead to increased support for Russia, already accused of stirring up trouble in Georgia.

[...]The police moved in to clear the way when Gachechiladze arrived and the protest organizers entered the Embassy to voice their demands, handing over a letter in Armenian which the Embassy promises to pass on to the authorities in Tbilisi once translated into Georgian. Typically for any demonstration in Armenia, they promised to fight until the end, but judging from the chants and the lack of any slogans calling for the release of the detained activists, it’s seems more likely that their main hope was to whip up anti-Georgian sentiments among the public.

To read more, see the original post.  

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

The Russians have expressed alarm about some former allies joining NATO and about the proposed U.S. missile shield in eastern Europe.

But some believe the dispute about Iran’s nuclear program could be an area of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia.

Angela Stent, the director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European studies at Georgetown University, joins Martin Savidge to discuss how President Barack Obama might deal with Russian leaders and his approach to the proposed missile shield and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The visit, along with a Russian warship’s visit to Venezuela and Nicaragua and passage through the Panama Canal earlier this month, comes in response to the announced American missile defense shield in Europe as well as the presence of American ships in the Black Sea during the recent conflict with Georgia.

Russia also announced that it plans to give 10 fighter jets to Lebanon as part of a defense cooperation deal, and is preparing to sell anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.

Christopher Sabatini, an expert on Latin America and senior director of policy for the Council of the Americas, speaks with Martin Savidge about the significance of the timing of the visit, Raul Castro’s proposed prisoner swap with the U.S. and potential changes to Cuba-U.S. relations under Barack Obama.

Timothy Frye, a professor of political science at Columbia University, speaks with Martin Savidge about the severity of the plan, the effect of the Russia-Georgia conflict and ways in which dropping oil prices will affect Russia’s assertive stance.

Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet foreign ministry official, speaks with Martin Savidge about recent Russian military demonstrations, which are meant to boost Russian morale and send a clear message to the West — “Respect us.”

Tanks in Gori, Georgia.

Russia has made headlines with its invasion of Georgia, arms sales to Iran and oil and military dealings with Venezuela. The country’s actions have triggered some media outlets to speculate on a new Cold War.

Greg Weeks is an associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and blogs at Two Weeks Notice, where he discusses Russia’s relationship with Latin America and it’s position in this new chapter — or not — of the Cold War narrative.

Russia and Latin America

The media is playing up the idea that we might be entering a new Cold War of some sort, which among other things entails deep Russian involvement in Latin America. Russia is playing this up, with Venezuela deals and military maneuvers, discussion of a closer relationship with Bolivia, and rumors about Cuba. Boz had a good recent post on the topic.

There is one point, however, that I never see mentioned but which is important and has historical precedent: Russia is primarily interested in the United States, and so all of these alliances are contingent upon relations with the U.S. If U.S.-Russia relations improved, Putin would feel no compunction about backing off and/or ignoring promises he’s made to Latin American leaders. The Soviets screwed Fidel Castro and humiliated him more than once. Putin doesn’t care about Latin America. He is not trying to “compete” in any significant way in the hemisphere, and likely won’t in the future either.

If I were a Latin American president, therefore, I would hop on the bandwagon as quickly as possible and get some goodies before they’re gone. My hunch is that Hugo Chávez is well aware, and so is successfully milking the situation while it lasts. I doubt he has any illusions about brotherhood with Russia (or Iran, for that matter). Thomas Shannon, who has been one of the few people in the Bush administration to talk sense about Latin America, argues that Russia-Venezuela ties are no threat and “aren’t likely to endure.”

So let’s see what signals the next administration sends to Russia. That will tell us a lot about what Russia does next in Latin America.

See the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user onewmphoto under a Creative Commons license.

Richard Gowan, an expert on international peacekeeping missions with the Center of International Cooperation, speaks with Martin Savidge about the latest development in Georgia.

Irene is 21 years old, 9 months pregnant and lives in a tent city in Gori, Georgia.

Some 128,000 Georgians were displaced following the Georgia-Russia conflict that began in August.

Louise Lee-Jones is a Worldfocus contributing blogger and guest columnist for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. She reports from Georgia about the challenges facing Georgian youth and women, who have fled their homes following the recent fighting. On the Pulitzer Center’s blog, “Untold Stories,” she writes about the Georgian women left without adequate reproductive health services.

The Forgotten Women of Gori

Irene smiles shyly as she waits to be seen in the small tent that is the reproductive health clinic in Gori Tent City. She is 21 years old and is nine months pregnant with her first baby. Her baby is due in the next few weeks and she wants to have it in the hospital when the time comes. Fortunately, the hospital in Gori wasn’t destroyed unlike many others in the areas to the north of the city.

Irene fled her home with her husband and his family when the fighting between the Russian and Georgian forces came too close for comfort. Fearing for their lives, they fled first to her husband’s sister’s house and then to a camp for displaced people. The camp is near their home in Gori and they’ve been living there for the last month. “We are all staying together in one tent, with other people” says Irene. “There are eight of us in one tent. It is ok, but noisy and there’s no privacy,” she adds.

I’ve come to Georgia as part of a fact finding delegation from the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development to assess the reproductive health needs of the displaced people in the region.

Most of the delegation is made up of MPs and MEPs but I am representing Marie Stopes International (MSI).

So why was MSI included? MSI, together with Columbia University, coordinates a multi agency, multi country programme which brings together 10 leading service delivery and advocacy organisations to scale up comprehensive reproductive health services in crisis settings. The programme, known as the Reproductive Health Access, Information and Services in Emergencies (RAISE) Initiative, helps refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs) and returnees in crisis areas such as Colombia, Northern Uganda, and Darfur in Sudan.

The reproductive health needs of displaced people are often neglected, even once the immediate priorities have been addressed. Yet failure to address these needs at the outset of an emergency stores up problems for women and the broader population.

To read more, visit the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of MSI/RAISE/Louise Lee-Jones.

To discuss Russia’s standing in the world and the future of the Russian economy, Martin Savidge interviews Vladimir Lensky, New York-based correspondent for Russia’s Channel One Television and Sergei Shestakov, a former Soviet foreign minister official, now with Russian International TV, which serves Russian immigrant communities around the world.

The market punished Russia

Dan previously reported that the European Union decided not to impose economic sanctions on Russia — at least for now. However, The New York Times had an interesting story on September 3 noting that the market was imposing its own penalty on Russia for its war versus Georgia.

…[I}nvestors are also unnerved by the aftermath of the five-day war in early August.

Russian shares have lost about a third of their value since hitting record highs in May. Russian and Western bank analysts polled by Reuters have cut forecasts for Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves.

As much as $25 billion in foreign capital may have left Russia since the Georgia conflict started, they said: while their growth forecasts were little changed at 7.5 percent, the crisis sharply cut the liquidity of the banking system.

Apparently, the Russian “stock exchange’s benchmark RTS index…suffered its biggest decline since the financial crisis in 1998.”

A major investor from Hong Kong is quite pessimistic:

“I have assets in both Georgia and Russia and I’m going to get out. What seemed a great idea at that time has become a sort of disaster,” said a 31-year-old banker at one of the world’s top 10 investment banks, who — like most here — spoke on condition of anonymity.

A British investor who lost money in 1998 is anonymously quoted saying “we’ll soon see a downward spiral that will result in another crash — give it a few months.”

On the other hand, at least one investment advisor was willing to be quoted by name in the article. “Armine Guledjian, vice-president of Halcyon Power Investment Company and a native Californian” admittedly has a strong self interest at stake. Still, she says simply:

“This is a great time to invest, as markets are so low.”

Don’t view that as an official Duck of Minerva recommendation.

To read more, visit the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Associated thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user josef_stuefer under a Creative Commons license.

August 7-16, 2008

First compiled on August 28, 2008, this timeline is continuously being revised as more information becomes available. The latest PDF version can be downloaded from my web site.

This unified timeline of the onset of the crisis in the Caucasus is based on the detailed timelines available on the web sites of the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Russia Today news service. These have been supplemented with various Georgian, Russian, and international press reports (references in brackets refer to the list of sources at the end of this document: “G” for Georgian, “R” for Russian, “M” for miscellaneous). For convenience all local times have been converted to GMT (UTC) which, at the time these events unfolded, was GMT (UTC) +4 in both Moscow and Tbilisi. There are surprisingly little disagreement about the actual sequence of events. Those that exceed two hours are noted with italics. My comments, in yellow at the bottom, attempt to highlight notable findings.

After six days of intermittent sniper and machine-gun exchanges between Georgian troops and South Ossetian militia, on August 7 the conflict intensifies. South Ossetian separatists claim that Georgian forces seek to occupy the surrounding hills. Georgia denies this, but by the morning of August 7 has amassed some 12,000 troops on the border to South Ossetia…

To read more, visit the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Associated thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user openDemocracy under a Creative Commons license.

Could Turkey abandon preconditions for relations with Armenia?

Two months ago, during a summit in Astana on July 7, Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian extended an official invitation to his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul to travel to Yerevan so they could watch together as their national soccer teams played a match. Since then, public opinion in both countries has been divided as to what lay behind the invitation, whether Gul would accept it, and whether he should.

There are, of course, many factors hindering the normalization of relations between the two countries. Several external players, in particular Russia, have no interest in the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border, as this could lead to Armenia turning toward the West. Any positive developments in Armenia’s relations with Turkey would be painful for Azerbaijan. And within Turkey, the normalization of relations with Armenia is not viewed as an urgent priority.

Even before Sarkisian’s initiative, Turkey was trying to use its strategic partnership with Georgia and Azerbaijan to broaden its influence in the South Caucasus without regard for its lack of formal relations with Armenia. For that reason, it appeared that Armenia needed a normalization of relations more than Turkey did. It was also clear that Turkey required something more substantial than Sarkisian’s proposals to begin normalizing relations, a process that would have to include establishing a joint commission to evaluate historical issues, before it would agree to open the border.

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