Earlier this year, Russia announced that it was broadly expanding support for the separatist region, Ossetia.
Russian troops entered a breakaway region of Georgia on Friday after Georgian forces pushed into the capital of the pro-Russian enclave, in a sharp escalation of the longstanding conflict.**
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin declared that “war has started” and President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia accused Russia of a “well-planned invasion,” saying he had mobilized Georgia’s military reserves.
Reports conflicted Friday about whether Georgian or Russian forces had won control of the capital of the rebel province, South Ossetia. It was unclear late Friday whether ground combat had taken place between the two sides in the capital, Tskhinvali.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia gained de facto independence from Georgia in the late 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The region settled into a tenuous peace monitored by Russian peacekeepers, but frictions with Georgia increased sharply in 2004, when Mr. Saakashvili came to power and made national unification a centerpiece of his agenda.
Since then an uneasy truce has reigned, with fighting between South Ossetia and Georgian forces erupting sporadically.
**NOTE: Ever since fighting in this region has escalated we have heard several claims today that the Georgians are of Semitic origin. They are not. They are “Caucasians,” Christian cousins of the Chechens. The Osset people are Iranic descendants of the Alans. This is NOT a race war per se but an attempt by the neocons and oligarchs to weaken Russia in the Black Sea and Caucasus, someting they didn’t pull off with the Chechen wars. –Ed.