Is Russia About to Annex Part of Georgia?

As the Olympics begin, there is troubling news from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, now an independent state. There's a province of Georgia called South Ossetia, populated primarily by ethnic Ossetians. Even though the province is in Georgia, a majority of its residents hold Russian citizenship. In the early 90s, the province declared its independence from Georgia, although that declaration was not recognized by any country or international organization. In 2006, South Ossetia held a an independence referendum that passed with over 99% of the votes. However, that referendum, although monitored, was also not recognized by the international community because the country of Georgia had not approved of holding the referendum and it appeared that ethnic Georgians, representing about 17% of the province's population, either did not or were not allowed to participate. In short, it's a mess.

In 2007, Georgia set up a commission designed to set up South Ossetia as a fully autonomous region within Georgia. That, apparently, has not worked.

Over the last decade and a half, Russia has established a significant economic and political presence in South Ossetia. As relations between Russia and Georgia have been tense (to say the least) since 1992, this has created a powder-keg.

The South Ossetian seperatists have gotten bolder and bolder recently, and Russia has installed "peacekeeping" troops in the province, which has racheted up the situation even more. It's important to note that Russia installed its "peacekeeping" forces of its own accord, and those forces are in no way authorized or recognized as peacekeepers by any other nation or organization. Georgia attempted to get the Russian troops replaced by E.U. forces, which would be a real peacekeeping force, but Russia rejected that.

As more Russian combat troops have moved in, Georgia massed troops of her own on the province's borders.

Today, the situation finally boiled over. Georgia launched an offensive to re-establish firm control over the province, and Russia responded by launching it's own attacks on Georgian air bases. Georgia responded back by downing two Russian warplanes.

Russia does recognize South Ossetia and another breakaway Georgian province, Abkhazia, as parts of Georgia. But it's unclear now what Valdimir Putin, and the new Russian President Medvedev's goals really are. It could be possible that their ultimate goal would be to embrace those two provinces as the initial satellite states of a new Russian empire.

This could get real ugly, real fast - turning into a full fledged Russian-Georgian War. It's well worth watching.