"Russian actions no self defence", Bildt states
Chairman of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe Carl Bildt (Swedish Foreign Minister), has submitted a fresh report to the ministerial committee on 24.th of August 2008:
"South Ossetia as well as Abkhazia are integral parts of Georgia and the military actions undertaken by Georgian forces during the conflict thus concerned Georgian territory". “[T]he military actions undertaken by Georgia, on its territory, cannot be seen as an aggression towards the Russian Federation which would trigger the latter’s right to self-defense. It is furthermore clear, that since it contravenes International law when a state uses military force to protect its citizens in another state, the Russian large-scale military actions in Georgia can not be justified as self-defence”. And further: ”Nor is the protection of peace-keeping forces as such a basis for the use of force under international law. [..] The large-scale military action by the Russian Federation against Georgia cannot be justified on these grounds. ”
Carl Bildt has been clear in his statements since the beginning of the conflict. Being one of the very few high level politicians with his personal blog, many have had the possibilities to follow negotiations and political mood swings in the conflict close through his many posts on the subject.
posted by Eistein G. at 4:53 pm
9 Comments:
Thank you Eistein for your patient work.
I hope you will compare and make a
analysis of the German point of view ,and the view without commercial interests.
http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/4943
Other information indicating a Russian military presence in South Ossetia on August 7 has seeped out through the Russian media. The Russian Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), published on September 3 an interview with Captain Denis Sidristy of the 135th motorized rifle regiment, who was wounded in the war. An observant Swedish blogger, Kalle Kniivilä, noted that in the original version Sidristy states that his unit was on exercise in North Ossetia, close to the Georgian border. On August 7, his regiment was ordered to move to South Ossetia, toward Tskhinvali, where it settled in. He then says he witnessed the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali around midnight. Kniivilä however noted that the original version was later changed on the Krasnaya Zvezda website, so that Sidristy is reported to say that the order to move into South Ossetia came on August 7 at night and that the attack on Tskhinvali was witnessed on August 8 in the morning. The New York Times also comments on the issue, stating that after Krasnaya Zvezda had been approached on the subject of the story, the paper published a new interview with Sidristy on September 11, where the captain corrected his previous statement, now claiming to have entered South Ossetia on August 8. Clearly, these inconsistencies and changes on the website indicate a cover-up, which in turn seems to lend credence to the assertion that Russian forces moved in long before Moscow acknowledges that fact.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,578273-2,00.html
In the Red Star account, Captain Denis Sidristy, the commander of a company of the 135th Motorized Infantry Regiment, describes how he and his unit were already in the Roki Tunnel, on their way to Tskhinvali, in the night 7. Aug. Did Moscow's invasion begin earlier than the Russians have admitted, after all?
Last week, Moscow investigators also conceded, for the first time, that the number of civilian casualties of the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali was not 2,000, as Russian officials have repeatedly claimed, but 134.
When asked about the account in the Red Star, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry told SPIEGEL that it was the result of a technical error. Moreover, the spokesman said, the official in question had been wounded and therefore "could no longer remember the situation clearly."
Last Friday Captain Sidristy, since decorated with the Russian defense ministry's order of bravery, was given a second opportunity to describe his version of the events to the Red Star. His unit, he said in his revised version, had advanced on Tskhinvali somewhat later than he had told the paper the first time.
As it appears, it is still difficult to separate truth and lies about the brief war in the Caucasus.
RALF BESTE, UWE KLUSSMANN, CORDULA MEYER, CHRISTIAN NEEF, MATTHIAS SCHEEP, HANS-JÜRGEN SCHLAMP, HOLGER STARK
Hello niklas nilsson,
Thank you for your interesting comment.
What you are saying here coincides very much with what Yulia Latynina has said earlier, both on Ekho Moskvy and Novaja Gazeta.
She has personally spoken with people saying that Russians startetd their military activities before August 7.
Here you find some of these statments:
http://www.echo.msk.ru/programs/code/543040-echo/
With regards
To Niklas nilsson,
I forgot to show you this article:
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/63/06.html
Here you find more about Latyninas findings.
With regards
Dear Niklas. Thank you for your valuable contribution. I look forward to read more than the quick glimpse I had of your website this morning.
Best regards
Dear Niklas and Eistein.
Is it still difficult to separate truth and lies about the brief war in the Caucasus ?
The German point of view today and between 1939 and 1941 ?
An article entitled "Soviet-Fascist Friendship" that appears in the current issue of Moscow's "Novaya gazeta" especially important.
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/70/20.html
It provides details about these events that neither the current Russian regime nor most Western observers know or even want to pay attention to.
Few Russian officials and relatively few Russians want to talk about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or to acknowledge the existence of the secret protocol that divided Europe between the two totalitarian dictators, but the "Novaya gazeta" article shows just what that meant both in terms of an alliance between Moscow and Berlin and for the people in between.
In its current issue, for example, "Gazeta" denounces recent Russian government efforts to "mythologize" and "revise" history especially when it concerns what the Soviet regime and especially its secret services did to the population by outright falsifications, selective indignation, or the suggestion that "everybody did it".
Keep up the good work
Ole Pedersen
Dear Ole, truth is something the majority agrees upon :-)
Therefore we must help the majority decide by putting facts on the stage for scrutiny.
Forty years ago, the Brezhnev doctrine proclaimed "once socialist, always socialist" as pretext for crushing the Prague Spring. Shall we now have a Putin doctrine: "Once Russian, always Russian?"
Saakashvili may be a fool, but he is a democratic one, and he is a lot better than a Putin puppet.
French Philosopher Andre Glucksmann Expounds On 'Putin Doctrine'
We haven't paid enough attention to what Mr. Putin says; sometimes he talks very candidly and speaks his mind. In 2005, he said publicly that the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century was the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991.
Is it bigger than the World War I, which killed 10 million Europeans? Bigger than World War II, which claimed 50 million lives worldwide? Bigger than Auschwitz, than Hiroshima, than the gulag? This explains Putin's entire policy, his drive to establish, as much as possible, an hegemonic power over Russia but also over close neighbors and former provinces of the Soviet empire.
The second point in the Putin doctrine has also been spelled out by him very openly. He said that the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine were expressions of a permanent revolution. This means he is very well aware that since the first uprising -- that of bricklayers in Berlin's Stalinallee in 1953 -- the Budapest and Polish revolts in 1956, the dissidence of the Russian intellectuals, the Prague Spring -- all led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that is to say the fall of the Berlin Wall.
So the Putin doctrine seeks to avoid a catastrophe similar to that of 1991, which would challenge Putin's power. That's why he attacks, and that's why he represents a public danger for the whole of Europe.
Russia's strength relies on three things: the fact that it is the world's second nuclear power, the fact that it is the second-biggest arms dealer, and the fact that -- it believes -- its energy resources enable it to blackmail modern democratic powers. This is why it taps into its turmoil potential. It sells weapons to Iran, [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez, Hamas, Hizballah. Countries that, like Russia, thrive on crisis have formed a common front.
http://www.lemonde.fr/opinions/article/2008/09/17/face-a-la-doctrine-vladimir-poutine-par-andre-glucksmann_1096224_3232.html
Torgny Segerstedt is remembered for his uncompromising anti-Nazi stance between 1933 and 1945.
Carl Bildt understands the situation to day very well to day .
Many off the apologists for Russia and its actions nitpicks Georgia’s uneven but sincere democratic transition process while ignoring the slide into autocracy going on in Russia.
The Russian political system is built on three pillars, resembling in a way the systemic build-up of the Soviet Union. One pillar is the idea of the Russian state, built on the concept of derjava, meaning a great power with a strong autocratic leader, resembling the authority of the monarch. The membership in the prestigious G-8, the ambition of rivaling at an equal foot with the United States, its veto power in the UN Security Council and the resulting ability to influence the world affairs - these are characteristics of the first pillar. The exercise of these leverages are meant to prove a sought great-power status and presently are aimed at supporting Kremlin’s efforts to wield influence over its former client states which, in practical terms, means preventing them from joining both NATO and European Union. When this is achieved, the goal will logically advance to build control mechanisms over the former Warsaw Pact countries.
The second pillar is Russia’s vast territory, its rich natural resources, and the consolidated perception that this needs to be protected against greedy foreigners. It implies that a large military is needed to defend the land, which contributed to the militarization of Russia at all levels of the society. And it resulted into a mental map of a ‘besieged fortress’ being ingrained into the Russians’ conscious, explaining the opposition to foreign military installations in its vicinity. This in turn has contributed to the tendency of the Russian strategic culture to place between its main territory and a potential rival either neutral or ‘buffer’ states.
The third pillar is the control of the state’s wealth and natural resources by the national elite. It requires, in the thinking of the Russian policymakers, strong, “sovereign” institutions able to provide for national security and project influence abroad. In the contemporary Russia, it takes the form of key decision makers gaining control of the country’s huge resources through monopolistic state enterprises like Gazprom.
By targeting the Russian center of gravity, the West can convince Moscow of its determination and discourage the insane game of chicken that Russia plays using its foreign policy tools.
Besides its firmness, the EU and United States also will need to learn to deconstruct Russian political rhetoric, which often borrows Western terminology while deliberately adopting it for its own purposes. The Kremlin mimicked the White House with its incursion into Georgia, invoking it was defending human rights and preventing genocide in breakaway South Ossetia. It recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states this week by declaring it was the will of the people, a throwback to U.S. support of independent Kosovo. In his speech recognizing the independence of the two enclaves, Medvedev taunted the West by hypocritically referring to the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act as the basis for this recognition. In reality, Russia’s actions violated the spirit and content of these documents.
Russia and the West speak a different language of foreign policy, determined by their different political systems and values. Understanding and considering these will help to find common ground in addressing Russia’s genuine and perceived insecurities of the second pillar.
The third pillar should be addressed through a carrot-and-stick approach. It involves mostly economics, technology, and innovation. Given the strong interdependence between Russia and the West, the latter should target the personal interests of Russian leaders. These interests are directly tied to the fate of Russian state monopolies. The decline in the Russian stock market and withdrawal of billions of dollars in foreign investment after the invasion of Georgia shows how vulnerable the economy can be.
But mainly the EU and United States should focus on the first pillar. In a way it is the most critical one, because it represents a logical extension of the other two. The new Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, approved in July 2008 two months after Dmitry Medvedev became president, emphasized that Russia sees relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States as a top priority. The war in Georgia, a country which has sought integration into Euro-Atlantic structures and has distanced itself from the CIS, is unquestionable evidence of this provision.
It is vital that the West prevent what Russia did in Georgia from snowballing into other infringements – perhaps over the Crimea or Transdniester. If this happens, then the price paid to stop Moscow later will be much higher. However it is unlikely that anything effective will be done to discourage further similar actions of Russia. In order to prevent interference from the West, Russia usually uses the tactics of small steps, which implies minor violations of international law, sovereignty and territorial integrity of its former satellites. Through this Kremlin avoids provoking stronger responses from the West. After every such small step Brussels and Washington decide that a minor violation does not deserve degrading the relations with such an important actor like Russia. However, summing up all these small steps brings into light a completely different picture.
The Cold War was characterized by the Soviet disregard of international law, the use of proxy wars to compete for world influence with the United States, and efforts to undermine the authority of the West. That’s not much different than what Russia is doing today.
Signs of the establishment in the Russian Federation of a shadow dictatorship of psycho-fascism similar to the fascist dictatorship of Nazi Germany .Suggestion in the modern world of New Science and Technology Control through the law of nature for improvement in all spheres of life and for the establishment of Peace throughout the entire world.
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