Georgia asks NATO to bring pressure to bear on Moscow to make it give up its policy on Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But Moscow’s policy on the two unrecognized republics, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, aims to guarantee the basic rights of the Abkhazian and South Ossetian people.

So Russia’s moves do by no means amount to the annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. What is safe to claim is that Russia supports the people who have found themselves on the verge of survival. Besides, many of those people carry Russian passports. Also, one should bear in mind that the people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will not hear of forming part of Georgia. Attempts to use force to make them return to Georgia will result in a war with lamentable consequences for Georgia’s neighbour Russia, to say nothing of the Georgian, Abkhazian and South Ossetian people proper. This is what Russia’s ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin says in a comment for The Voice of Russia:

«The Georgian leaders should realize that they have lost their war against Abkhazia and South Ossetia precisely because the people of the two republics see the issue of independence as one of life or death. They are fully aware that as long as Saakashvili pursues a policy of creating a unitary state, any nation or ethnic group in today’s Georgia will have the right to its own history, its own language and to autonomy. But Mikhail Saakashvili feels Georgia needs a civil war. He would personally stand to gain to boost his own political career. But Saakashvili is not going to fight through the use of his own forces. He certainly relies on NATO. However, NATO comprises both Americans AND “Old World” countries, that’s Europeans who have their own path of development. The Europeans are not about to get involved in other countries’ military adventures».

It is understandable that any change of the existing order of things, the more so a change that’s unacceptable to one party to a conflict, is fraught with major complications. In this particular case, Tbilisi’s desire to replace the Russian peacekeepers in the conflict area with international force units in the hope that western countries will connive at the Georgian military’s moves is unfeasible for one simple reason, namely because no responsible western politician would agree to order his country’s troops to a hotbed of tension that’s about to degenerate into a full-scale war. Analysts feel the scandal that Georgia is trying to fan up in the West boils down to an attempt to use international institutions to make Russia give up efforts to settle the problem of Abkhazia ad South Ossetia. But this kind of Georgia’s attempts will hardly bear fruit.