Heavy fighting in South Ossetia.

[Jarvitä]

According to what I hear from people in Russia, the situation is presented slightly different there. According to their media, many, if not most, of people in South Ossetia actually have Russian citizenship - about 10,000 before conflict. According to their media, Georgian population believes that "Georgia is for Georgians", and tried to "reunite the region" by getting rid of Ossetians there altogether - by starting to shoot civilians and what few peacekeepers were there, and causing the rest to flee the country. I was not there, and don't know for sure what happened there. But such scenario seems at least possible. The people I know from Russia approve their government's actions.

Of course, as is common these days, both sides accuse each other of terrorism. All I've seen on the news so far is "Russia says this" and "Georgia says that"...don't any neutral media houses have any reporters in there?

 

[tomek]

All media-neutral houses in the region seem to have been destroyed in firefight.

 

[Andy44]

There is no such thing as a neutral media house.

And terrorism is the new fascism, the word you use to demonize anyone you don't like.

 

[Urwumpe]

European media has it own reporters in the region, but even these have often problems telling who is shooting at whom. Last Germany related news was the kidnapping of two Germans in South Ossetia.

Also, the peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia had been a joke:Russians, South Ossetias and Georgians.

 

[SiberianTiger]

The people I know from Russia approve their government's actions.

To describe it better, most of the people in Russia believe that the government did the right thing when then pressed in with quick military response. Also, very few have doubts about Georgians having attacked first. More than a half believe that Georgians were silently sponsored by USA and their actions were given a green light by certain persons from the White House. However, I believe that very few really regard Georgians as real enemies. The very thought of fighting a former Soviet republic whose culture is in close tanglement with Russian culture is utterly disturbing (for except maybe to those who are too heavy intoxicated by nationalist ideas). I bet many sighed in relief at knowing there won't be an urban fight in Tbilisi.

That's about feelings, the facts is a different topic to discuss.

 

[Urwumpe]

Newsflash: Georgian soldiers have been spotted fighting with German assault rifles, though the direct export of such rifles had not been allowed by the ministry of economy. The rifles had been fairly recent G-36 rifles, that means only very few countries are potential resellers.

 

[astrosammy]

Newsflash: Georgian soldiers have been spotted fighting with German assault rifles, though the direct export of such rifles had not been allowed by the ministry of economy. The rifles had been fairly recent G-36 rifles, that means only very few countries are potential resellers.

Hmm what does our government do?:dry: :lol:

 

[Jarvitä]

Newsflash: Georgian soldiers have been spotted fighting with German assault rifles, though the direct export of such rifles had not been allowed by the ministry of economy. The rifles had been fairly recent G-36 rifles, that means only very few countries are potential resellers.

Interesting, what is your source?

 

[Urwumpe]

Interesting, what is your source?

The German public broadcasting magazine "Report Mainz" was the initial source, but it looks like other reporters are now verifying the sightings.

 

[astrosammy]

Has anyone seen the new strategy game "Caucasus" already? :lol:

 

[Jarvitä]

Has anyone seen the new strategy game "Caucasus" already? :lol:
YouTube - Georgien vs. Russland , Georgia vs. Russia

:rofl:

Oh well, if humor on this topic is allowed,

(captions)
second picture: tsar Putin and his 300 peacekeepers bravely subdue the evil Georgians,
third picture: all of Ossetia is screwed (repeated)
fourth picture: tanks of the Russian peacekeepers purge Georgian territorial ambitions

 

[adamb193]

Kein problame sie sind Russland!

LOL.

 

[Andy44]

Gasoline for the fire.

Here's a perspective you won't find on Fox News (aka Neocon News Network, NNN):

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan93.html

(PS: Assuming the G in G-36 stands for "Gewehr", and the K in K-98 stood for "carbine", and most modern assault rifles are cabines, why the G and not a K?)

 

[GregBurch]

Gasoline for the fire.

Here's a perspective you won't find on Fox News (aka Neocon News Network, NNN):

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan93.html

This is the same fellow who recently published a book arguing that it wasn't necessary to fight the fascists in World War II. I don't know how Buchanan can walk, what with his knuckles dragging the ground so hard ...

 

[Andy44]

Well, Newton bless him for offering a counter to the Wilsonian FDR-worship nonsense that we Americans have all been indoctrinated since birth, as well as the chickenhawk whiners we see on the Sunday morning talk shows.

 

[SiberianTiger]

South Ossetian conflict: financial figures and barrel count

Mocow, August 14 - RIA Novosti. Analysts of the Strategies and Technologies Analysis Centre have calculated that one day of the South Ossetian war costed Russia 2.5 billion Rubles in money equivalent, accoding to the Centre's head Ruslan Pukhov.

"For Georgia, one day the South Ossetian fighting costed 4.8 billion Rubles (roughly 200 million US Dollars.

Two billion Rubles a day - this is the imaginable minimum of what Russia might have been spending to sustain the war. These are the bare military expenses, but their part are the spendings on the humanitarian actions sponsored by the Ministry of Defence: evacuation and accommodation of the refugees, providing them with supplies and medical care.

We counted only those terms that can be counted at all following the world-recognized methods. This, for instance, a cost of a single airplane's or helicopter's sortie, a day of a single tank's, APC's, warship's operation, the expenditure of fuel.

We have not estimated the total cost of the destroyed and damaged vehicles and equipment of Russian Army, because the Ministry of Defence is keeping these data secret. The military command acknowledges only losses of four aircraft shot down in action: these are 3 Su-25 attack planes and one Tu-22M3 strategic bomber.

Even if we count only the bare cost of the all four lost aircrafts, this boosts up the cost of one day of the war up to 2.5 billion Roubles.

The Army don't even approximately tell us the number of the damaged tanks, APC's, infantry combat vehicles, automobiles. And such losses have been there; it becomes obvious just from looking TV reports from the South Ossetia.

Also, we did not count ammunition expenditure. We can only be sure about that the costly high precision weapons were used little, the most shots fired were ordinary, relatively cheap shells, bombs and rockets.

According to our calculations, the biggest specific weight of the Russian expenses in the Military action in Causacus keeps the fuel - this is no less than 1.2 billion of Roubles a day.

With the cease-fire in effect, as the specialists believe, the military expences of Russia in Caucasus decreased insignificantly. In addition to that, soon the period of the so called combat personnel pays-off will come, like it had happened during the Chechen campaign (in 1999-2001). Then, each Private was paid additional 810 Roubles a day, Sergeant received plus 830 and an Officer had 900.

As to Georgia, it's not so easy to count. They've got much worse casualties and material losses compared to Russia, they have got deeply destroyed military and civilian infrastructure. Georgians don't reveal the actual scale of their losses. Experts believe that this country has been losing no less than 200 million dollars a day. But there is an important subtlety here. The military economy of Georgia is paid for from American budget: in the year 2007 the military expenditures of Georgia reached one billion dollars. Georgia just doesn't have this much money. It's also known that their purchases of weapons and military equipment was at 50 to 80 per cent rebate to the world's market prices"

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Today's lenta.ru message at http://lenta.ru/news/2008/08/16/take/

Russia has captured one fifth of the Georgian tanks

Russia has steered away 44 Georgian tanks captured by Russian peace-keepers in the zone of conflict between South Ossetia and Georgia, said Interfax at August 16, quoting the deputy commander-in-chief of the Army Colonel Igor Konashenkov.

According to him, during the military action in the conflict zone Russian peace-keepers captured 65 tanks of Georgian Army in total. However, more than 20 of the captured tanks were demolished, because they either have been damaged or were a completely obsolete hardware. It's necessary to note that before the onset of the conflict, Georgia had 230 to 240 tanks in total.

Also Konashenkov said that Russian army managed to capture tens of other armoured units, including 5 "Osa" SAMs, 15 BMP-2 APC's, several D-30 cannons, and also self-propelled artillery of Czech produce and some American-produced APC's. According to the Colonel, most of the captured vehicles was produced or modified in Ukraine.

It's necessary to point out that accordind to earlier reports, the retreating Georgian forces left 15 tanks, tens of armoured vehicles and artillery units, shells and rockets in hangars and warehouses near North Georgian town of Gori. Part of the ammunition was detonated and another part was transported away from Georgia.

Russian troops did also retrieve the following weapons from a different army base in Senaki (which had also been abandoned by Georgian troops without a combat): 1728 units of firearms in total, including 764 M-16 assault rifles (USA-produced), 28 M-40 machine guns (also USA produced) and 754 Kalashnikov assault rifles.

 

[Urwumpe]

Russia had been using SS-21 Iskandar short range ballistic missiles against Georgian targets according to this blog. The evidence is pretty solid as debris parts show GRAU numbers, which are fitting to the SS-21. The iskandar is the equivalent of the NATO ATACMS, but with a twice as heavy warhead, as well as different options (HE, Cluster and Thermobaric).

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/

 

[Jarvitä]

Does some treaty forbid them from doing so? Because I don't see anything wrong with using missiles as opposed to putting aircraft at risk. I agree it's wrong that civilians were killed, but why is it such a big deal whether they use theatre missiles or bombers?

 

[Urwumpe]

Does some treaty forbid them from doing so? Because I don't see anything wrong with using missiles as opposed to putting aircraft at risk. I agree it's wrong that civilians were killed, but why is it such a big deal whether they use theatre missiles or bombers?

It is mostly another indication of the Russian built-up of troops in the region long before the official Georgian start of hostilities. These missiles are not standard on regiment level, they are part of bigger units (division level). And sure not suited for peace-keeping.

 

[Jarvitä]

It is mostly another indication of the Russian built-up of troops in the region long before the official Georgian start of hostilities. These missiles are not standard on regiment level, they are part of bigger units (division level). And sure not suited for peace-keeping.

Well, if you put it that way, a few thousand ICBMs did a great job at peacekeeping for almost 50 years, but I guess that was different because both sides were aware of their enemies' arsenal. I see your point, though.