CNN: Russia invades Georgia

I turned on CNN this morning and was greeted by the tagline “RUSSIA INVADES GEORGIA” in big, bold type screaming across the bottom of the screen. The morning show host looked worried, I can only imagine because since Russia had invaded Georgia she expected Russian troops to kick in the doors of CNN’s Atlanta studios at any minute now. It’s worth noting that CNN was the only media outlet I could find (so far) that characterized today’s actions as a Russian “invasion”.

So what’s really going on? Regular readers of this site will know that tensions between Russia and Georgia have been running high for months now over two regions in Georgia – Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which rebelled from Georgia in the early 90’s and have enjoyed de facto independence for more than 15 years now. Russia has kept peacekeeping troops in both regions for much of that time, has economic ties to both areas and has issued Russian passports to many of each region’s citizens. Both sides have engaged in more than their fair share of sabre-rattling recently over the two regions and until today there had been a few, very small-scale military actions.

For the past few days there have been reports in the Russian media about the Georgian military shelling areas inside of South Ossetia. An attack yesterday apparently killed several Russian peacekeepers as well as some South Ossetian civilians. In response Russia has sent a column of tanks into South Ossetia heading for the regional capital Tskhinvali to defend both their peacekeepers and their citizens (since many Ossetians hold Russian passports). What else is happening past that is hard to sort out. MSNBC’s Pentagon correspondent this morning said that NATO was reporting a large build-up of Georgian troops along the South Ossetia border (something that backs up claims Russia has been making for the past few weeks). The cable news channels have run a clip of rockets flying through the night sky that looks impressive, but it’s impossible to tell who is doing the shooting and who’s being shot. Georgia claims that Russia has bombed areas within Georgia proper and that they have shot down four attacking Russian aircraft. The Russians and South Ossetians claim that Georgia has launched large-scale attacks into South Ossetia and that they are engaging in ethnic cleansing among the Ossetians.

Getting back to CNN for a minute. One reason for their breathless coverage this morning was an exclusive interview with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. Well, interview is a bit of a misstatement since it was more of a monologue by Saakashvili, who wrapped himself in every pro-democracy movement of the past 50 years. Keep in mind though that less than a year ago, Saakashvili himself was involved in a questionable presidential election. Election monitors from Europe found convincing evidence that Saakashvili’s government engaged in voter intimidation, vote rigging and used the state-run media as a PR machine for Saakashvili, while denying opposition candidates airtime. Saakashvili last December used police riot troops to break up a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration complaining about corruption and authoritarianism in his government, ironic since similar demonstrations (the ‘Rose Revolution’) brought him to power in 2004.

But Saakashvili has proven adept at portraying himself as a George Washington of the Caucasus, and the United States in particular has been eager to support him because Georgia is the home to the only oil and gas pipelines running from the rich Caspian Sea region that do not pass through Russian territory. Any problems that Saakashvili has with ‘democracy’ are passed off as growing pains of the budding Georgian democracy (really, that’s what the election monitors said about the last election, while saying that similar problems in Russia marked the death of democracy there).

A final note on the “invasion”. Any discussion of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has to come back to Kosovo, because like Kosovo both of these Georgian territories claimed to be independent, self-governing regions that were not part of the countries that claim them. So if Russia has invaded Georgia by sending troops into South Ossetia, then hasn’t NATO and the European Union invaded Serbia through their actions in Kosovo? Something to ponder.

UPDATE – Fox News is reporting (just after 11am) that South Ossetian officials are claming that over 1,000 civilians have been killed in Tskhinvali by Georgian forces. Tskhinvali’s population is only estimated to be around 42,000 people.