>WW4 File: Russian troops seize Tskhinvali, Georgian troops withdraw from S. Ossetia; second front opens in Abkhazia as Russian Navy imposes blockade

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– Russian Warplanes Widen Bombing Campaign Throughout Georgia Proper, Attack Residential Areas, Military Infrastructure, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline

– Second Front Opens in War: Abkhazia’s Unrecognized Government Mobilizes Against Georgian Forces in Region

– Eight Warships from Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet Dock at Abkhazian Port

– NATO Intervention Looms: Turkey Stations Warships off Georgian Port of Batumi

– Book by Former KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn Explains Role of Caucasus Republics in Soviet Deception Strategy

The manufactured “war” between Russia and Georgia, which serves the strategic interests of the still-active Communist Party of the Soviet Union, is widening. Both “sides” are trading accusations: Russia accuses NATO aspirant Georgia of orchestrating genocide in South Ossetia, which Tblisi denies, while Georgia accuses Russia of broadening its aerial bombing campaign throughout the country, which Moscow denies.

Pictured above: Resident of the Georgian city of Gori stands near dead relative on Saturday, after Russian warplane dropped a bomb on this apartment block.

On Saturday Russian troops assumed control of the Georgian city and South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, previously the charge of a joint peacekeeping force consisting of Georgian, South Ossetian, and Russian soldiers. In the process of taking over the provincial capital, the Russian Army repelled Georgian forces, which have now withdrawn entirely from South Ossetia. “The Russians have taken South Ossetia, they are in Abkhazia and they’re looking to take control of the entire country,” Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili declared earlier today. “They have a massive military.”

Meanwhile, the Russian military is opening a second front in Georgia’s other breakaway region Abkhazia, which has a shore on the Black Sea. The unrecognized government in Sukhumi is mobilizing its forces against Georgian positions as the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet establishes a naval blockade against Georgia. Eight Russian warships docked at an Abkhaz port today. Even though ethnic Russians constitute a minority in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, more than 70 percent of South Ossetians and 90 percent of Abkhazians have Russian citizenship.

Yesterday Russia’s KGB-communist dictator Vladimir Putin arrived in North Ossetian city of Vladikavkaz, which is located in Russia, and justified his country’s invasion of diminutive Georgia: “From a legal point of view our actions are absolutely well-founded and legitimate and moreover necessary,” Putin ranted, adding: “Georgia’s NATO drive is an attempt to draw other countries and other nations into its bloody, reckless schemes.” Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, claimed 1,500 South Ossetian civilians were killed in the burning of villages in just one day of Georgia’s offensive.

For their part, the USA and the European Union are resorting to the usual, ineffective hand-wringing, candle-clutching, and pleading about “regional stability,” while Moscow’s communist allies in Beijing shed huge crocodile tears over the peace that has vanished in the Caucasus region. “We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by all troops. We call for an end to the Russian bombings,” US President George W. Bush opined, tossing in his two cents’ worth. “China is seriously concerned about the worsening situation and armed conflict in South Ossetia,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang lamented in a written statement. “We call on the relevant parties to keep restraint and cease fire immediately.”

“The European Union strongly states its commitment to the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Georgia and its internationally recognised borders and urges Russia to respect them,” Brussels blathered. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who reports to self-anointed world peacemaker European/French President Nicolas Sarkozy, flies to Tbilisi today and to Moscow tomorrow to urge a cease-fire between Russia and Georgia.

Georgian sources insist that a cease-fire has been declared in the region, but Russian source refuse to confirm the claim. Pictured below: Abkhazians aim rocket launcher at Georgian positions, in this televised image grab from August 10, 2008.

Georgia Pulls Troops From South Ossetia After Losses (Update3)
By Emma O’Brien and Lyubov Pronina

Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) — Georgia withdrew its troops from the separatist region of South Ossetia after four days of fighting with Russian and Ossetian forces as casualties rise “into the hundreds,” a government official said.

“Casualties are very heavy in many places,” Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said by telephone from the capital Tbilisi. “We are withdrawing from South Ossetia.”

Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Russian deputy chief of the General Staff, confirmed that a Georgian withdrawal has begun. He told reporters in Moscow that most of the regional capital Tskhinvali is controlled by Russian peacekeepers.

Heavy fighting began on Aug. 7 in South Ossetia, which broke from Georgia in a war in the early 1990s. Russia sent troops and tanks into the disputed region the next day in what it said was a response to Georgia’s assault on Russian citizens and peacekeeping forces. Most residents of South Ossetia hold Russian passports.

Georgia said Russian warplanes bombed targets in the country in an offensive President Mikheil Saakashvili called a “well-planned invasion.”

Second Front

A “temporary” cease-fire has been declared in the region, to which the Russians have agreed, Utiashvili said.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry “has no such information,” a spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing ministry rules. “I can neither confirm nor deny it.”

A second front has opened in the four-day-old conflict as eight Russian warships docked in a second breakaway region, Abkhazia, Kakha Lomaia, head of Georgia’s Security Council, said by telephone. “They’ve been bombing Upper Abkhazia,” he said. “They hit two villages overnight” in addition to the border town of Zugdidi, he said. Upper Abkhazia is a Georgian- controlled area within Abkhazia, which also broke away from the Black Sea country in a war in the early 1990s.

Nogovitsyn said Russian naval ships are not involved in the fighting.

Kristian Bzhania, a spokesman for Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh, said Russia increased its naval presence off Abkhazia at the request of the regional leadership after four Georgian warships tried to enter its territorial waters, the Interfax news service reported.

Abkhaz Warplanes

Bagapsh said Abkhaz warplanes and artillery are being deployed against Georgian positions in the upper part of the Kodori Gorge, as the Abkhaz refer to Upper Abkhazia, Interfax reported. Abkhaz forces will continue operations to “restore order” on both sides of the border with the rest of Georgia, Interfax cited Bagapsh as saying.

The Abkhaz leader ordered an urgent mobilization of reserves, Interfax said, citing Bzhania.

The Russians “have taken South Ossetia, they are in Abkhazia and they’re looking to take control of the entire country,” Utiashvili said. “They have a massive military.”

Georgia’s parliament last month approved an increase in the size of the country’s military to 37,000 troops. Russia has an army of 1.13 million.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is “alarmed” by the spread of the conflict to Abkhazia, the UN said.

Possible Blockade

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner flies to Tbilisi today and to Moscow tomorrow to seek and end to hostilities between Georgia and Russia, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said. He will be accompanied by Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, the current chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In signs of an economic blockade, Russian warships prevented a Ukrainian ship carrying grain and an unidentified oil tanker from docking in the Georgian port of Poti, Economic Development Minister Eka Sharashidze said by telephone. Azerbaijan stopped sending oil to Georgian ports for export because of the clashes, AFP reported, citing Rovnag Abdullayev, head of SOCAR, the country’s state oil company.

“This is suffocation of the country,” Lomaia said. “An economic blockade like this is very close to genocide.”

Nogovitsyn said Russia hasn’t imposed a naval blockade on Georgia. Ships leaving the Black Sea country’s ports are “under greater control,” he said.

Energy Corridor

Georgia is a key link in a U.S.-backed “southern energy corridor” that connects the Caspian Sea region with world markets, bypassing Russia. The BP Plc-led Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline to Turkey runs about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Tskhinvali.

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday the fighting was a “a dangerous escalation” and called for an “immediate halt to violence.” The State Department issued a travel advisory to discourage Americans from visiting the region.

Even before the latest fighting began, increasing tension and violence in Georgia’s rebel regions, which Saakashvili’s government has consistently blamed on Russia, made the former Soviet republic a flashpoint in Russia’s relations with the West. Georgia’s push to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in particular has caused friction. The U.S. strongly backs the bid, while Russia considers further eastward expansion of NATO a security threat.

“We always fight for our friends,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on July 10 in Tbilisi of Georgia’s NATO bid. While NATO refused to grant Georgia fast-track status for membership in April, Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance agreed that Georgia and another aspirant, Ukraine, “will become members of NATO.”

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said yesterday that the fighting in South Ossetia makes clear that Georgia’s NATO drive is “an attempt to draw other countries and other nations into its bloody, reckless schemes.”

Source: Bloomberg

Meanwhile, the Russian Air Force, which first penetrated Georgian airspace on Friday, continues to bomb selected targets in Georgia proper. On Saturday Russian warplanes bombed the port of Poti and city of Gori, reportedly killing civilians, and also damaged the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which begins in Azerbaijan, crosses Georgian territory, and terminates in Turkey. Israel has a vested interest in the security of this pipeline and thus the presence of nearly 1,000 Israeli military advisers in and Israeli military support for Georgia, facts which we believe have Biblically prophetic significance for near-future relations between Russia and Israel. Yesterday AFP news agency reported:

Russian warships headed for the Georgian coast, Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili said after air raids on the port of Poti and the city of Gori, where inhabitants said scores of people were killed. The leaders of Russia and Georgia also stepped up their war of words. “What they are doing is nothing to do with conflict, it is about annihilation of a democracy on their borders,” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said in an interview with the BBC. Saakashvili declared a “state of war” in his country on Saturday but also offered a ceasefire to Russia.

Georgia said a Russian air raid had “completely devastated” the Black Sea port of Poti in attacks that the country’s UN ambassador likened to “a full-scale military invasion”. This was followed up with air raids on Gori, the main Georgian city closest to South Ossetia. Georgia’s prime minister said another attack targeted the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline but did not damage it. Azerbaijan still suspended its oil exports through Georgia. Apartment blocks in Gori were left in flames and residents said scores of people were killed. Georgian television showed images of the body of a pilot from a Russian jet shot down.

The same source reported yesterday for the first time that a second front, involving the movement of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet towards Abkhazia, was beginning to open in Georgia’s other breakaway region:

The conflict spread to Abkhazia, another breakaway region of Georgia, where the separatist government said its forces had launched attacks on Georgian troops. Georgia accused Russia of staging the attacks in the Kodori Gorge region, the only part of Abkhazia controlled by Georgia. The United States has been informed that Russia plans to move parts of its Black Sea fleet towards Abkhazia, a US official in Washington said on condition of anonymity.

Today the Russian Air Force continued to target Georgian infrastructure and Tblisi, although on Friday Russian warplanes hitVaziani , a military base near the Georgian capital, to which 130 US servicemen are currently assigned and at which only one week ago 1,000 US soldiers were present for a joint military exercise with troops from the Caucasus republics. Until 2006 Vaziani was the site of a Russian garrison. A factory on the eastern outskirts of Tbilisi that builds Su-25 jet warplanes was damaged by Russian bombs, the story below reports.

Russia increases bombing blitz
August 10, 2008

Russia expanded its bombing blitz against Georgia, targeting the country’s capital for the first time.

Heavy Russian shelling forced Georgian troops to pull out of the capital of the contested province of South Ossetia.

Russian jets, which have been roaming Georgia’s skies since Friday, bombed a factory on the eastern outskirts of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi that builds Su-25 jet warplanes.

The attack inflicted some damage to the plant’s runways but caused no casualties, said Georgia’s Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili.

Georgia’s Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said the Georgian troops had to move out of Tskhinvali, the provincial capital of separatist South Ossetia, because of heavy Russian fire.

“Russia further escalated its aggression overnight, using weapons on unprecedented scale. In these conditions our forces conducted redeployment,” Lomaia said.

Georgia, whose troops have been trained by American soldiers, began an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia on Friday, launching heavy rocket and artillery fire and air strikes that pounded Tskhinvali.

In response, Russia, which has granted passports to most South Ossetians, began overwhelming bombing and shelling attacks against Georgia and Georgian troops.

The Georgian president proposed a ceasefire on Saturday but Russia said it wants Georgia to first pull its troops from South Ossetia and sign a pledge not to use force against the breakaway province.

The UN Security Council planned to meet for the fourth time in four days to try to resolved the situation.

The South Ossetian Conflict and Soviet Strategy

Pictured here: The Kremlin’s rent-a-mob youth groups rally outside the Georgian embassy in Moscow, on August 10, 2008.

As we have previously documented, the conflict between Moscow and Tblisi is contrived and related to the Soviet deception strategy, implemented in 1960 at the Eighty-One Party Congress. The main objectives in this manufactured war probably include: 1) perpetuating the ruse that the “post”-Soviet states are disunited and weak, 2) portraying the government of alleged KGB agent Mikhail Saakashvili as a Washington-backed puppet regime, 3) providing a pretext for the Soviet Army to re-occupy Georgia, from which it formally withdrew in 2006, and thus maintain its position near strategically important ally Iran and the Persian Gulf, and 4) distract NATO-NORAD commands from possible Russian preemptive strike against Western Europe and North America.

In The Perestroika Deception (1995, 1998) former KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn describes the secret channels of control that bind the “post”-communist Caucasus republics to Moscow, as well as explains the communist strategy behind the “national forms” promoted in the Not-So-Former Soviet republics:

The present Communist strategists are concealing that it is they who are now creating “independent” Republics–repeating on a much broader scale Lenin’s experience with the Far Eastern and Georgian Republics, and also Stalin’s deceptive dissolution of the Comintern in 1943. The strategists are concealing the secret coordination that exists, and will continue to exist, between Moscow and the “nationalist” leaders [like Saakashvili] of these newly “independent” Republics. There has been ample time, and every opportunity, to prepare for this coordination in advance. Given such coordination, the fragmentation of the Soviet Empire will not be real or lasting, as the West assumes, but fictional. This is not true self-determination, but the use of “national” forms in the execution of a common Communist strategy along lines pioneered by Lenin.

The central domestic purpose of the strategy and the final phase of “perestroika” is to renew the regimes of the Soviet Union and other Communist countries, and to convert them into states of “mature socialism with a human face” in order to promote the external strategy of “convergence.” These regimes must be “acceptable” to the West for “convergence” purposes. Thus the strategy goes far beyond domestic political restructuring, since it is aimed at the “restructuring” or “re-shoeing” of the West–the “reform” of Western attitudes and policies–and ultimately the peaceful conquest of the United States and Western Europe from within [pages 204-205].

“NATO-friendly” President Saakashvili described the Russian incursion as a “well-planned invasion.” Indeed. As Moscow’s man in Tblisi, he was no doubt briefed on the attack through secret channels well in advance of the military action. Saakashvili is thus playing his part well as leader of a small country victimized by the Big Bad Russian Bear and is already attempting to drag the Western Alliance into the Caucasus conflict with pleas for intervention. On August 8, the first day of the Russian incursion into South Ossetia, the Georgian president appealed to the international community, including the USA:

Our troops are being attacked by thousands of troops from Russia. Right now, we have 150 Russian tanks, and other armoured fighting machines, coming into Georgian territory. The movement started last night and throughout the day Russian planes have been continuously attacking Georgian towns outside the conflict zone. We have no chance of defeating the might of Russia. The outside world must step in and halt Moscow’s blunt aggression.

In effect, Saakashvili, in collaboration with Moscow, is establishing a scenario for the Fourth World War. NATO intervention in the South Ossetian crisis may be nearing as news reports yesterday indicate that NATO member Turkey has stationed its warships off the Georgian port of Batumi. Meanwhile, the shopping mall regimes slumber, oblivious to Soviet strategy and disinterested in the Russian strategic bombers once again probing NATO-NORAD airspace.