Good explanation of the Russian aggression

I found this on a Bulgarian news site.


This war and its significance cannot be understood unless we consider the circumstance that it has been going on for more than 16 years now. After the collapse of the Soviet Union several regions in Georgia became home of forceful separatist movements. South Ossetia is one, the other two are Abkhazia and Adjara. With the help of the Russian army and Chechen commandos hundreds of thousands of Georgians were brutally driven out of Abkhazia. Until 1990 the Abkhazians constituted 18% of the population there, now they claim the territory theirs alone and want to establish an independent state on it. Yet in the beginning of the 90s the Russian Army and Government supported those local militia juntas, dictatorships, founded actually on mafia structures. Their purpose is separatism and detachment of areas from the territory of Georgia. There are numerous reasons for Russia to back those groups but the major one would be geopolitical. South Caucasus is a crucial corridor between Europe and Central Asia, which, once opened for international trade and for the structures of international security, will take away one of Russia’s major imperial tools of control over Central Asia as well as one of the major strategic routes from Europe to Asia and the other way round.
Russia has had tens of opportunities to support the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. However Russia would not do so because it does not need them to be independent. Russia needs conflicts to obstruct the free movement through the corridor – trade international institutions, development of independent democratic systems that will force Russia to get on equal terms with these countries. Russia is leading a classical imperial policy, which, by backing separatist organizations and local mafia juntas, is blocking this corridor and is blocking the international access to Centrals Asian and Eurasian resources – economic and geopolitical. This has caused a number of tragedies in Georgia, the conflicts and destruction in the period 1991-1994, the extremely inefficient government of Eduard Shevadrnadze. Shevardnadze’s government almost turned Georgia into an African state, fretted by corruption and decline. After the Rose Revolution of November 2003 however Georgia elected a Government of young and dynamic people. Over a couple of years they managed to bring the country to its feet and turn it into an attractive point for international investment, they managed to stabilize it economically socially and demographically. Russia could not swallow this bitter pill and ever since then Moscow has been provoking Georgia. Going through the Russian media would leave one with the impression that the Georgian Army assaulted South Ossetia practically unprovoked. The truth is that almost a month ago systematic instigations by Eduard Kokoyti’s regime in South Ossetia began, backed by the so-called Russian peacekeepers as Russia is playing the role of both a party in the conflict and of peacekeeper, which, from a rational point of view is absurd, but to Russia seems quite normal. There was an attempt for the assassination of the South Ossetian Chair of the Council of Ministers, who took a pro-Georgian political viewpoint. A number of attacks against Georgian villages followed, local Georgian activists were murdered with the support of Russian peacekeepers. All these things made Georgian troops invade the region to stop provocations. Russia actually accomplished its purpose to start military action against Georgia at a convenient time – summer, Olympics, the last months of the presidency of an unconvincing American president like George Bush. All these factors overlapped to let Russia reopen with maximum strength the conflicts in South Ossetia and prevent Georgia from joining NATO as well as keep the international community away from becoming a mediator in the conflicts as that would cause Russia to lose its monopoly in the region.