Brussels | June 19

UPI - Confidential documents written by the EU team investigating last year's Russian-Georgian war assign much of the blame to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

A majority of EU experts say the Georgian president, and not the Kremlin, ordered the first military strike against two breakaway provinces, according to the documents obtained by German news magazine Der Spiegel. The Georgian offensive into South Ossetia and Abkhazia escalated into a five-day war with Russia that the powerful neighbor won.

That doesn't mean the Kremlin is entirely innocent. A senior member of the EU experts' commission tasked with probing the conflict, Otto Luchterhandt, a German international law expert, argues the Kremlin was legally entitled to counterattack but violated "the principle of proportionality" with its massive intervention in Georgia. Other commission members are also arguing that Russia is to be blamed.

** Der Speigel:EU Probe Creates Burden for Saakashvili

John Heilprin | United Nations | June 16

AP - What's in a name? Enough to anger Russia, which exercised its veto power in the U.N. Security Council and brought an end Monday to the nearly 16-year-old observer mission monitoring a cease-fire between Georgia and its breakaway Abkhazia region.

Russia's veto late Monday toppled a Western plan to extend the life of the U.N. mission for another year, or even two more weeks, to work out a compromise. The vote was 10-1 with four abstentions China, Vietnam, Libya and Uganda.

The mission's mandate will now expire at midnight Monday in New York, requiring about 130 military observers and more than a dozen police to leave. Both the name the U.N. Observer Mission in Georgia and references to Georgia's territorial sovereignty were sticking points.

"It is understandable," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday, "that in the new political and legal conditions most of the names and terms previously used in the old documents are inapplicable."

Also see from Registan: Iran Isn’t the Only Country Rioting

Sebastian Rotella | Paris | May 30

LA Times - Officials say they foiled a plot by Hezbollah and Iran to bomb the Israeli Embassy in revenge for the 2008 slaying of Imad Mughniyah. Anti-terrorism officials fear a new militant hub.

It happened in Baku, transforming the capital of Azerbaijan into a battleground in a global shadow war.

Police intercepted a fleeing car and captured two suspected Hezbollah militants from Lebanon. The car contained explosives, binoculars, cameras, pistols with silencers and reconnaissance photos. Raiding alleged safe houses, police foiled what authorities say was a plot to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that borders Iran.

Western anti-terrorism officials say the arrests a year ago thwarted swift retaliation by Hezbollah and Iran for the slaying of Imad Mughniyah, the legendary warlord of the Shiite Muslim militia based in Lebanon whose death was widely blamed on Israel.

The prosecution remained largely a secret until this week, when closed court proceedings began for two Lebanese and four Azeris charged with terrorism, espionage and other crimes.

Tbilisi | May 28

Reuters - Georgia's influential Orthodox church called on Thursday for snap elections or immediate dialogue to end an "explosive" stalemate between the opposition and President Mikheil Saakashvili.

The statement's recognition of elections as a potential way out will give the opposition new heart after seven weeks of street protests demanding Saakashvili resign over his record on democracy and last year's disastrous war with Russia.

"The situation in the country is explosive," Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II said in a statement.

"The authorities should take efficient steps that envisage holding early elections or the immediate start of negotiations," he added.

An opposition threat to block the main highway and the vital railway line, which some protesters blocked briefly on Tuesday night, deepened fears of violent confrontation in the former Soviet republic, a transit route for oil and gas to the West.

** Russia gets Abkhazian oil
** Georgians march through capital, call for reform
** Georgia says UN's Ban blackmailed by Russia

Ellen Barry | Moscow | May 17

NYT - Sergei Bagapsh wants to make it perfectly clear: Abkhazia is not now, and will not become, part of the Russian Federation.

Almost five years after being elected president of the breakaway Georgian territory, Mr. Bagapsh owes an enormous debt to Russia, his northern neighbor. Russia went to war last August to support Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s claims to independence from Georgia, and the Kremlin recognized both territories as sovereign nations, fulfilling the wish that has driven separatists through two decades of war and privation. No other country, he said, has shown “any concern for the Abkhaz people.”

But his gratitude is not without limits. With Russian border guards taking up long-term positions on Abkhazia’s periphery and Russian investors eager to buy up beachfront property, Mr. Bagapsh said Abkhaz independence remained a central worry. He also said he had been forced to push back on several occasions when Russian partners asked too high a price for their assistance.

“A small country is obliged to defend its statehood,” he said, in an interview in Moscow. “This is our main question now — that we should never again experience the kind of assimilation that Georgia forced on us.”

David Nowak | Moscow | May 16

LA Times - Former officials of Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia said Friday that tyranny and official corruption have flourished there following the Russian-Georgian war last summer.

Russia recognized South Ossetia and another separatist province as independent shortly after Russian forces repelled Georgia's effort to regain control over South Ossetia. Moscow has pledged more than $240 million in aid to South Ossetia.

But former South Ossetian security council head Anatoly Barankevich, who battled Georgian tanks during the conflict, said many residents have become disillusioned with life under pro-Russian leader Eduard Kokoity.

Speaking at a Moscow news conference before May 31 parliamentary elections in the province, Barankevich said hundreds of millions of dollars meant to rebuild homes, schools and hospitals have been misappropriated under Kokoity.

"What has happened practically a year after the war? Nothing. Not one apartment has been rebuilt, not one business has recuperated," Barankevich said.

"There are dozens of concrete examples of theft" of aid, he said

Ellen Barry | Sukhum, Georgia | May 8

NYT -

As night gathers over the Black Sea waterfront, a dozen pilgrims meet in the second-floor classroom where they are studying Abkhaz, the language of their new home.

The neighborhood has a decrepit, post-Soviet feel and is still pockmarked with bullet holes from Abkhazia’s war to separate from Georgia. At moments of weakness, when the task of learning Russian and Abkhaz is making her head swim, Selin Katsba longs for Istanbul, where she grew up.

Then she remembers herself. In Turkey, many ethnic Abkhaz she knows are toying with the idea of returning to the land their great-grandparents fled — especially now that it is under the protection of Russia. If she wavers, they will waver.

“In the eyes of my peers and my family, I am like a symbol and a leader because I have returned,” said Ms. Katsba, 22, who arrived here for a 15-day visit more than two years ago and never left. “It’s important that I stay.”

Now that Russia has recognized the territory as a sovereign nation, authorities hope ethnic Abkhaz will return from the places they fled to in the 19th century, in part to escape the expanding Russian empire. They hope that some percentage of the estimated half-million Abkhaz in Turkey will replenish Abkhazia’s Abkhaz, whose numbers have slipped below 100,000, and that entrepreneurs from the diaspora will provide new investment.

So far, the returnees are trailing in one by one, and no one expects a sudden influx. But if Abkhaz repatriation picks up speed, it could have a long-term effect, shoring up ties with Turkey, reaffirming its split from Georgia and lessening its reliance on Russia. Officials here say plans are afoot to build a mosque in the capital, a project that has been discussed for generations, and one that would signal a welcome to settlers.

Luke Harding | May 6

The Guardian - Nato today began a series of controversial military exercises in Georgia following an apparent failed uprising at a Georgian army base yesterday and Moscow's expulsion of two Nato diplomats this morning.

Russia said it was expelling Isabelle Francois, the Canadian head of Nato's Moscow information office, and a worker at her office.

The move was in retaliation for last week's expulsion of two Russian diplomats, who had been accused of spying, from Nato's Brussels HQ, Russia's foreign ministry said.

The ministry said it was summoning Canada's ambassador to Moscow.

"The withdrawal of diplomatic accredition in Moscow will be our response," a Russian official told the Interfax news agency. "We are not the ones who initiated such behaviour. We have been forced to act in this way."

Matt Robinson | Tbilisi | May 5

Reuters - Georgia said on Tuesday a Russian-planned coup plot had been uncovered within the military of the former Soviet republic and a rebellion was under way at a military base near the capital.

The Interior Ministry said those involved in the plot had received money from Russia which has criticised NATO military exercises in Georgia due to begin on Wednesday.

"The main aim of this uprising was to disrupt the NATO military exercises," Defence Minister David Sikharulidze told Reuters. "We are in negotiations with the soldiers at the Mukhrovani base and I hope this uprising will end soon."

Sikharulidze said the commanders of the military base 19 km (12 miles) from the capital Tbilisi had been dismissed and the soldiers confined to barracks.

The Interior Ministry said one person had been arrested.

"They (the plotters) were receiving money from Russia," ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told a news conference. "It seems it was coordinated with Russia."

Apr 17

BBC - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has condemned Nato's "dangerous decision" to hold military exercises in Georgia next month.

He said such decisions "are aimed at muscle-flexing" and would impede the resumption of full-scale contacts between Moscow and Nato.

Moscow's envoy to Nato said on Thursday he had asked the Western military alliance to postpone the exercises.

Nato says the exercises, from 6 May to 1 June, represent no threat to Moscow.

Held some 20km (12 miles) east of Georgia's capital Tbilisi, they will be non-aggressive and based on a fictitious UN-mandated, Nato-led crisis response operation, the alliance said.

"There should really be no element of surprise for anyone," Nato spokesman Robert Pszczel said. "There is no heavy armour involved at all, it's just people."

Tbilisi | Apr 14

AFP - Georgia's opposition moved on Monday to boost pressure on President Mikheil Saakashvili with round-the-clock protests outside his office as up to 20,000 rallied for a fifth day to demand his resignation.

"We have come closer to the president to tell him he must leave, that he must take the country out of this crisis," opposition leader Irakli Alasania, a former Georgian envoy to the UN, told protesters outside the presidency.

Thousands of opposition supporters have been protesting against Saakashvili since Thursday in the biggest anti-government demonstrations since a war with Russia last August.

About 8,000 protesters broke off from the main rally outside parliament Monday and marched on the presidency, where they set up stages, blocked entrances to the building and vowed to stay indefinitely.

Matt Robinson | Tbilisi | Apr 9

Reuters - Georgia braced on Thursday for mass demonstrations against President Mikheil Saakashvili by opponents emboldened by a disastrous war last year with Russia.

The opposition accuses Saakashvili of an authoritarian streak that has stifled democratic reforms promised in the 2003 Rose Revolution that swept him to power in the former Soviet republic.

War in August, when Russia crushed a Georgian assault on breakaway South Ossetia and sent tanks to within 40 km (25 miles) of Tbilisi, emboldened critics who argue the president has made too many mistakes to stay in power until 2013.

Opposition leaders, their ranks swollen by defectors, are predicting turnout of 150,000, and say protests will continue daily until Saakashvili, 41, resigns and calls elections.

C.J. Chivers | Tbilisi | Apr 3

IHT/NYT - Nearly eight months after the war between Russia and Georgia, Russian troops continue to hold Georgian territory that the Kremlin agreed to vacate as part of a formal cease-fire, leaving a basic condition of that agreement unfulfilled.

The Russian military, working with the governments and the small military forces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two separatist regions in Georgia, has stationed forces in two large swaths of territory that were under Georgian control before the war. Observers and diplomats say Russia has also used attack helicopters and stationed tanks in areas where none existed before the war.

Matthew Collin | Tbilisi | Mar 29

The Observer - Tbilisi government says an armed coup is planned

Georgia, which fought a disastrous war with Russia over South Ossetia last year, is bracing itself for a political showdown as the opposition tries to oust President Mikheil Saakashvili amid simmering discontent over his role in the conflict.

The opposition will take to the streets of Tbilisi to demand Saakashvili's resignation on 9 April - the 20th anniversary of the day when the Soviet army killed some 20 people as it crushed Georgian independence demonstrations.

In recent weeks, anti-Saakashvili posters have appeared all over the capital, while the opposition has also been boosted by a television show featuring a popular singer conducting interviews with opposition activists and local celebrities from a specially constructed "prison cell". The protest singer Giorgi Gachechiladze - known as Utsnobi, or "The Unknown" - has said that he will remain in self-imposed incarceration until Saakashvili steps down.

Earlier this month, Utsnobi held a protest concert near the president's residence, drawing several thousand. The 9 April demonstrations are hoped to draw far greater numbers.

The Georgian authorities have accused the opposition of accepting money from Russia to fund its anti-government campaign, although no proof has yet been offered. They have also raised fears that mass protests next month could turn violent after several activists were detained last week on charges of illegally buying weapons and plotting a coup.

Baku | Mar 19

AFP - Azerbaijan voted Wednesday to scrap a two-term presidential limit, paving the way for President Ilham Aliyev to indefinitely extend his family's dynastic hold on power in the oil-rich ex-Soviet republic.

With more than half the votes counted by early Thursday, 92 per cent of Azerbaijanis had voted in favour of lifting the restriction, Central Elections Commission chairman Mazahir Panahov told journalists.

Dozens of other constitutional amendments proposed in the referendum, including new restrictions on the media, were also set to be approved, he said.

"The percentages in favour are so high that we can already say that all the changes will be approved," he said.

Opposition groups had called for a boycott, arguing that the vote would allow Aliyev, whose family has dominated politics here for nearly four decades, to be president for life.

Ellen Barry | Tskhinvali | Mar 8

NYT - Six months after Russia and Georgia fought a war over South Ossetia, the enclave’s capital city is still a mass of fresh scars.

Many people in Tskhinvali are shivering through the winter behind windows made of plastic sheeting. Piles of broken glass and trash — in one case, the charred turret of a Georgian tank — sit along central boulevards, as they did in August. Stray dogs, their owners long gone, nose around the streets for food.

There are reminders of the euphoria that swept this valley last summer, when Russia acknowledged South Ossetia’s 18-year separatist struggle by recognizing it as a sovereign nation. Graffiti proclaims “Ossetia thanks its defenders” and “Great Russia,” and citizens say they are extraordinarily grateful to be free of Georgian rule.

But it has been a hard winter, and reconstruction is moving slowly. The South Ossetian president, Eduard Kokoity, said the process had been delayed by price gouging and shoddy workmanship by unscrupulous contractors in the first round of reconstruction, and he promised that the pace would pick up this spring. Residents, many of whom scrounged materials and patched up their homes themselves, are beginning to wonder when the promised aid will reach them.

Tom Lasseter | Tbilisi | Feb 13

McClatchy Newspapers - Some four years ago, as he stood before a cheering crowd of tens of thousands, former President George W. Bush declared that Georgia's pro-western government was "inspiring democratic reformers . . . across the world."

Georgia's ouster of its Russian-linked leadership in the 2003 Rose Revolution and the following year's U.S.-backed Orange Revolution in Ukraine had sent a message that "freedom will be the future of every nation," Bush said.

Today, though, the governments of Georgia and Ukraine are unraveling — symbols not of freedom but, to a large extent, of U.S. foreign policy errors, tarnished American allies and an emboldened Russia that's capitalized on its rivals' weaknesses.

Stefan Korshak | Kiev | Jan 31

DPA - It used to be that Kiev City Hall stopped trying to make money off taxpayers once they were finally dead.

That was before the world financial crisis struck the Ukrainian capital - and Kiev Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky's scheme to make visiting a municipal cemetery, and one's deceased relatives, subject to an admission fee.

'It's shocking. How dare they try to take a toll on the dead?' demanded retiree Klavdia Efomenko during a visit to Kiev's Baikovo cemetery. 'Have those big bosses no shame left at all?'

Violent objections by Kiev religious leaders and secular media pressured Mayor Chernovetsky, a financial magnate proud of running his banking empire with tight-fisted economy, to back off somewhat from the per person charge.

But the battle to squeeze money out of Kievietes has gone on. Chernovetsky is struggling with a tide of red ink, a yawning 1.2 billion-dollar gap between projected 2009 city income and expenditures, according to a Fokus Ukraine news agency report.

Funeral services in Kiev, according to witnesses, are largely performed by city employees motivated by bribes, making the business a potential municipal gold mine, the energetic Chernovetsky argued.

Olesya vartanyan & Ellen Barry | Tbilisi | Jan 30

NYT - Georgia’s scattered political opposition gathered on Thursday to demand the resignation of the president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and call for early presidential and parliamentary elections.

Among the figures backing the declaration were Nino Burjanadze, Mr. Saakashvili’s partner in the street revolution that brought him to power, and Irakli Alasania, who recently left his post as Georgia’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Since the war with Russia in August, there have been sporadic calls for impeachment or early elections, but no sign that Georgian citizens want to topple the government. The declaration on Thursday represented the broadest coalition of opposition groups to date, behind increasingly radical demands.

David Gamkrelidze, a chairman of the New Rights party, noted that three months ago, his party was alone in calling for the president’s resignation.

“Today almost all the political parties agree,” he said. “Every day more people and politicians understand that he has no capacity to overcome the crisis and that he is responsible for all these mistakes in Georgia and he must resign.”

Christian Lowe | Moscow | Jan 26

Reuters - Russia will start building a naval base this year in Georgia's Black Sea separatist region of Abkhazia, Russian media reported on Monday, a step Tbilisi said would violate its sovereignty.

Russia angered the United States and Europe after its war with Georgia last year by recognising Abkhazia, and the second separatist region of South Ossetia, as independent states and establishing a permanent military presence in both regions.

A naval base in Abkhazia is likely to add to Western concerns that Moscow is flexing its military muscles, including by moving its armed forces back into areas they vacated after the collapse of Soviet rule.

"The fundamental decision on creating a Black Sea Fleet base in Ochamchire has been taken," Tass quoted the official as saying. "This year we will begin practical work, including dredging, along Abkhazia's coast.

Jan 20

BBC - Russia's Gazprom company has said it will resume gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine at 1000 local time (0700 GMT), ending weeks of disruption.

The announcement was made by Sergei Kupriyanov, the firm's top spokesman.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko earlier said she had witnessed the gas starting to flow again at 0100 GMT.

Jan 18

BBC - The Russian and Ukrainian prime ministers have struck a deal at talks in Moscow to resume Russian natural gas exports to Europe via Ukraine shortly.

Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko emerged to brief reporters, ending a day of delicate talks.

Under the deal, Ukraine will start paying for Russian gas at the much-higher European prices from next year.

"In the very near future, transit - and the Ukrainian side has assured us to this effect - will resume," said Mr Putin, speaking alongside his Ukrainian counterpart on Russian TV.

Mrs Tymoshenko said that the two countries' energy companies, Gazprom and Naftohaz, had been instructed to draw up the relevant contracts by Monday

Luke Harding | Moscow | Jan 14

The Guardian - Russia accused the US last night of "orchestrating" Europe's gas crisis as gas deliveries to the EU were halted hours after they resumed, amid venomous exchanges of accusations between Moscow and Kiev.

Gazprom, Russia's gas company, said its pumping stations began sending gas through Ukraine early yesterday, following a monitoring deal signed in Brussels on Monday. But hours later, Gazprom said Ukraine was blocking the flow of gas - adding that the US was to blame.

"We believed yesterday that the door for Russian gas was open but again it's been blocked by the Ukrainians," said Gazprom's deputy chairman, Alexander Medvedev. "It looks like ... they are dancing to the music which is being orchestrated not in Kiev but outside the country."

The state department dismissed the accusation. Medvedev later explained he was referring to Ukraine's strategic partnership deal with the US, which was signed in Washington last month by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. That pact enhances co-operation on defence, energy and trade, including the delivery of gas. The agreement will also see the US set up a diplomatic mission in the Crimean regional capital of Simferopol - a move likely to infuriate the Kremlin. The ethnic Russian region has been at the centre of claims that Moscow is trying to fuel separatist sentiments in order to undermine Ukraine's pro-western leadership.

Last night Medvedev said it was "pretty strange" the charter envisaged co-operation between Ukraine and the US on gas since Ukraine "didn't produce gas". "Ukraine has discredited itself. It's like a madman with a razorblade in its hands," he said.

Sabina Zawadzki & Dmitry Zhdannikov | Kiev/Moscow | Jan 11

WaPo/Reuters - Ukraine, Russia and the EU struck an agreement on Sunday that should enable the resumption of Russian supplies via Ukraine to Europe, large parts of which have been plunged into a mid-winter energy crisis.

But it was likely to be Tuesday at the earliest before the gas reaches Europe, where many factories have closed and thousands of households have shivered in sub-zero temperatures after a pricing row between Moscow and Kiev choked off supplies.

The agreement signed on Sunday is for international teams of monitors to deploy to pumping stations along the route of gas pipelines through Russia and Ukraine to Europe -- a condition set by Moscow to start pumping gas again.

Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom said in a statement the firm was waiting to receive a faxed copy of the agreement, signed in the early hours of Sunday in the Ukrainian capital, before letting monitors start work.

Once they are in place, the gas taps will be re-opened but it is likely to be a further 36 hours before the fuel reaches customers in Europe because of the time it will take for pressure to build up in the pipeline network.