In reality, the conflict between Russia and Georgia is not just about Abkhazia but about Russia’s lingering resentment at what it regards as Western encirclement. Following the end of the Cold war and demise of the Warsaw Pact, Russia believed it had an assurance from Nato and the West that there would be no expansion [...]

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Russia wants Georgia, its former Soviet possession, to stay out of NATO so badly it is risking armed conflict to support the breakaway region of Abkhazia. In the past two months, Russia has sent almost 1,000 troops into Abkhazia, established direct economic ties with it and downed an unmanned Georgian spy plane.
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Russia is sending a unit from the army’s railway force to the breakaway province of Abkhazia, the country’s defence ministry has said.
The 300 unarmed troops are needed to help carry out repairs on the network, said the head of Abkhazia’s railways.
The move has been denounced by Georgia which says Russia is planning a military intervention [...]

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Russia was accused yesterday of stoking separatist tensions as part of a campaign to prevent the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine joining Nato.
Georgia said that Russia was arming rebels in the breakaway region of Abkhazia to provoke a war and scupper its bid to join the military alliance.
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Moscow also angered Ukraine by [...]

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United Nations investigators who examined the downing of an unmanned Georgian reconnaissance aircraft in April have concluded that the drone was struck by a missile fired from a Russian fighter plane, according to an advance copy of their report obtained on Monday.
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The long military standoff in Abkhazia, where a separatist dispute has risked escalating this year to a renewed war, has entered a phase of quiet diplomacy aimed at easing tensions and urging negotiations, according to officials on both sides of the conflict.
No agreement to negotiate has been reached, and the differences between the Abkhaz and [...]

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A more plausible explanation of Russia’s propaganda offensive and increase in the numbers of both regular and irregular forces in Abkhazia is not fear of a Georgian attack, but plans for the opposite: an attempt to retake the Kodori Gorge. This would humiliate, perhaps topple, Georgia’s pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili. Russia would see it as [...]

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Analysts are actively debating the possible outcomes of an armed conflict between Georgia and the self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia, which seceded from Georgia in 1992.
Without looking into the most pessimistic scenarios envisioning a nuclear conflict between Russia and NATO, let’s try to predict the possible outcomes of a Georgian-Abkhazian conflict.
In late 2007 the Georgian armed [...]

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Russia’s deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war “very close,” a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday.
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GEORGIA and Russia agree upon one thing: the situation in the breakaway province of Abkhazia is bad and getting worse. Georgia, an ex-Soviet republic with close links to America, says that Russia is illegally putting more troops in the region. Last week it produced video footage of what looks like a Russian warplane shooting down [...]

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Russia’s defence ministry is sending extra peacekeeping troops to two Georgian separatist regions in response to what it calls aggressive moves by Georgia.
“Analysis of the structure of the armed forces in this region leads to the conclusion that a bridgehead is being prepared… for military operations against Abkhazia,” the ministry said.
Russia maintains a peacekeeping force [...]

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Russia warned Friday that it may use military force if conflict breaks out between Georgia and its breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia — and voiced concern over the presence of Georgian troops in the area.
Foreign Ministry official Valery Kenyaikin also was critical of the United States’ role in helping to resolve the conflict, [...]

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Georgia has asked the U.N. Security Council to discuss Russia’s “military aggression” after saying a Russian jet shot down one of its unmanned spy planes.
To bolster its case, the Georgian air force released a video that it says shows a twin-tailed Russian MiG-29 shooting down a Georgian unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, over the separatist [...]

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Beware Russian gunships that pass in the night.
WAS it a stunt, a signal or a test? A month after helicopters launched a night-time rocket attack on government buildings in Georgia’s Kodori gorge, nobody knows. As so often in post-Soviet imperial politics, the big picture is clear, but the details are mysterious.
The big picture is that [...]

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