A Russian military official denied a Russian Mig was in the area at the time.

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The latest clash is over South Ossetia, one of two Georgian regions that fought their way to unofficial secession in the 1990s. There have been fisticuffs and tit-for-tat blockades between Georgian troops and Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. Last week, Georgia’s parliament, accusing Russia of annexing its territory, called for Russian troops to get out. (As in Abkhazia, the other enclave, most South Ossetians now have Russian passports.) In retaliation for visa requirements imposed on Russian troops, the Russian embassy in Tbilisi stopped issuing visas to Georgians.

There are two interpretations of this vitriol. One is that, accustomed to brinkmanship as both sides are, neither really means it. Both understand the need to play to a domestic gallery. That may be true of some Georgians—diplomats point out there were no ultimatums in the Ossetian resolution—but feelings in the Kremlin seem authentically bilious. Hence the other possibility, that the Georgians are miscalculating.

Like other small countries, Georgia is used to seeing its fate decided elsewhere. Zurab Noghaideli, the prime minister, says his government knows its problems must be solved by itself above all; but its strategy seems to be to attract as much attention as possible in America and Europe. That may be based on an inflated idea of how willing outsiders are to take up Georgia’s cause. They may be even less willing should the imperfections of Mr Saakashvili’s regime become still more pronounced (even though Ms Zourabichvili’s talk of “creeping totalitarianism” is exaggerated).

Ms Zourabichvili says that, should disappointment with the current course set in, the paradoxical outcome might be to drive Georgia back towards Russia. Meanwhile, the Kremlin could make life even tougher. Russian officers say that if they leave (unlikely, at least for now), there could be a new conflict in South Ossetia. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, who visited neighbouring Azerbaijan this week, has compared Georgia’s enclaves to Kosovo.

Given Russia’s problems in Chechnya, self-determination might seem an odd principle for the Kremlin to espouse; but their problem, say the Russians, is terrorists, not separatists. “Some people just don’t know where the borders of the Russian Federation end,” says Mr Saakashvili. Unfortunately for him, the status quo in the enclaves—power to make trouble, with no responsibility—suits Russia nicely. The risk is that war may come to seem the only way forward.

The caucasus destabilising poses a huge threat to Western interests too. Any war, even small scale, would have serious regional affects. The mix of Iranian gas and oil, Azeri oil, Caspian oil, the BTC oil pipeline, Turkey, Chechnya, ethnic and religious strife - it’s a potent mix indeed.

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It all makes this article in Foreign Affairs more interesting. I have puzzled over the lack of resentment for Stalin among all of the former Soviet Union, Sarah Mendelson and Theordore Gerber write about polls carried out in the former Soviet Union over the last few years, it makes for startling reading, especially among younger people:

The rule, therefore, seems to be thorough ambivalence about Stalin among Russia’s youth. Although some people might take comfort in the finding that hard-core Stalinism is not widespread, such ambivalence is itself disturbing. It suggests that Russia badly needs a systematic de-Stalinization campaign — a need that is growing increasingly urgent. Our survey data suggest that young people’s attitudes toward Stalin are, if anything, becoming more positive: in 2005, nearly 19 percent of respondents said they would definitely or probably vote for him, up from 13 percent in 2003 and 2004.

The article suggests solutions, education being the main one, but in Putin’s Russia this appears to be a problem:

Western cheerleaders of Russian President Vladimir Putin are likely to dismiss positive Russian attitudes toward Stalin as a minor growing pain or a speed bump on the country’s road to democracy — just as they downplay the carnage in Chechnya; the festering, potentially explosive conflict throughout the North Caucasus; the Kremlin’s blatant suppression of independent television outlets and nongovernmental organizations that dare to challenge its official line; the sorry state of Russia’s disintegrating military; the predatory and ineffective police; and the massive corruption at all levels of Russian government.

Such willful blindness is dangerous. But so is the opposite perspective of some pessimistic Russia-watchers, who take Russians’ ambivalence toward Stalin as evidence of an authoritarian gene embedded somewhere in the Russian character. In fact, the Russian public’s attitude toward Stalin is neither innocuous (and thus not worth changing) nor inherent (and thus immutable). Our surveys suggest that Russian attitudes toward Stalin owe not to any instinctive authoritarianism, but to the fact that no concerted, effective de-Stalinization campaign has ever been conducted in the country. On the contrary, myths and illusions about Russia’s great dictator have been allowed to survive, and even thrive, often with tacit (if not explicit) encouragement from the government.

Will Stalin be rememberd by his people as a great and wise leader, or as a murderous tyrant?

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Near-simultaneous blasts rocked three slot machine halls in the Russian Caucasus town Vladikavkaz on Thursday, killing two people, the local Emergencies Ministry said.

There was no word on what had caused the blasts in the gaming parlors, which are popular across Russia after gambling was outlawed in Soviet times.

“Thirteen people are injured and two people have died,” a spokesman said.

Russian news agencies reported most casualties were young people in their 20s and there were some children among the injured.

Vladikavkaz is in North Ossetia, the same region where Chechen militants took a school in Beslan hostage in September 2004, resulting in the deaths of 331 people, more than half of them children.

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A Georgian man has been sentenced to life in prison for throwing a grenade at a rally attended by US President George W Bush in Tbilisi last May.

Vladimir Arutyunian was found guilty on charges including terrorism, treason, attempted assassination and the killing of a police officer, the judge said.

The grenade landed 30m (100ft) from Mr Bush and the Georgian leader, who were standing behind bullet-proof glass.

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The government of President Ilham Aliyev allowed the opposition to stage a three-hour rally in the outskirts of the capital, Baku. Election officials have ordered re-runs in two districts and one recount.

About 15,000 protesters attended the march and rally, many wearing or waving orange flags in a reference to the success of the “orange revolution” that brought President Victor Yushchenko to power in Ukraine after disputed elections.

The numbers fell far short of the 30,000 to 50,000 the opposition had hoped for.

This could fester.

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One campaign has involved decrees on electoral propriety from Ilham Aliev, Azerbaijan’s president, the open registration of candidates, plans for exit-polling and the release of political prisoners. Beneath these niceties, however, lies another campaign that has alarmed foreign election and human-rights observers. This one features the beating and detention of opposition candidates and their supporters, media bias, and bizarre allegations of a coup plot that followed a mysteriously aborted homecoming by an exiled opposition leader. This election may yet be judged to have been little cleaner than the rigged presidential poll in 2003, when Mr Aliev succeeded his father Heidar, a Soviet-era boss who ran the country again for the last decade of his life.

Some facts on Azerbaijan for general interest:

Azerbaijan has more people (8m), and most are Muslims. It is in a rough neighbourhood: to the north is Dagestan, an anarchic region of Russia; to the south, Iran. It lost a chunk of its territory in a war with Armenia in the 1990s, and the two countries may yet fight another. Above all, it has oil and gas: new pipelines will soon carry both from the Caspian to the Mediterranean. And, like its election, Azerbaijan has two faces. It is a proud, booming nation with a westernised elite and a glamorous capital, Baku; it is also grotesquely corrupt, beset by clan rivalries, its bureaucrats fattening on backhanders while 40% of the country lives in poverty.

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Indeed the Economist piece back in February discussed the instability of the region.

IN ANY other European country, the carnage would have caused horror. But ten years of war in Chechnya have inured most Russians to the fates of desperadoes such as the obscure Islamist group that two weeks ago holed up in an apartment in Nalchik, the capital of the north Caucasian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. A three-day siege ended bloodily: the apartment was gutted, and its seven occupants, alleged perpetrators of a murderous attack on a government agency in December, were all killed.

Still, the location of this particular last stand was troubling. Kabardino-Balkaria had until recently been a patch of relative calm in Russia’s poorest, angriest and most complex region. So too, until last October, had seemed Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria’s western neighbour. Then seven businessmen were killed, and their bodies thrown down a mine. The son-in-law of the republic’s president was implicated in the murders, and a mob stormed the presidential headquarters in Cherkessk, the capital.

And indeed it warned back then:

In Ingushetia and North Ossetia, people whisper about unknown bearded men turning up at mosques. Mass unemployment helps to make militancy seem like a good career option. But while the threat may be growing, only a small minority dream of a north Caucasian caliphate. Many of the region’s problems have nothing to do with either religion or ethnicity.

The big risk is simply that more and more of the north Caucasus may slip into lawlessness and drift out of Moscow’s orbit. After his meddling in Ukraine, pundits talked of Mr Putin’s plans to reconstitute the Russian empire. But, in a sense, Russia is already its own empire. The possibility that it may one day crumble as the Soviet Union did is Mr Putin’s central fear. The neglect of the north Caucasus may eventually lead to that fear’s realisation.

We will have to wait and see who is behind the latest attacks.

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In turn I had a browse around, despite my lack of German. I find some lovely photos of Georgia, and this fascinating study into the just completed BTC pipeline.

Isn’t the blogosphere wonderful?

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A top human rights official in the Russian-backed administration in Chechnya says there are more than 50 mass graves in the troubled republic.

Nurdi Nukhazhiyev told the BBC that tens of thousands of civilians had “disappeared” since 1999.

Whither the international outcry?

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The BTC pipeline, though the most expensive option for exporting Caspian oil, was backed by America because it avoided Russia, thereby reducing the dependence of the Caucasus and Central Asia on Russian pipelines. The pipeline also provided an opportunity to bolster regional economies that the West is courting, especially those of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, a NATO ally, and build support for America in the region. Georgia’s location gives it a “strategic importance far beyond its size�?, according to America’s State Department.

Upgrading an alternative route through Georgia to Supsa on the Black Sea would have made for a far shorter (and cheaper) pipeline. But Turkey complained that it would lead to an unsustainable level of shipping passing through the Bosporus Strait that bisects Istanbul. At Washington’s urging, the BTC pipeline wended its complex way through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. However, some critics of the pipeline point out that the oil revenues provided to Azerbaijan will help to prop up the country’s autocratic and corrupt regime. And environmentalists have complained that the pipe slices through a national park in Georgia.

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Bush’s warning to Putin, his host in Red Square only 24 hours before at the 60th anniversary celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany, was focused on two separatist enclaves within Georgia’s borders - Abkhazia and South Ossetia - that are aligned with Russia.

Earlier in the day, at a joint news conference with Saakashvili in the Parliament building, Bush embraced the Georgian president’s plan that the enclaves become autonomous and self-governing, but not independent. He approvingly said that Saakashvili “wants the country to remain intact.”

Bush’s words were immediately criticized by the president of Abkhazia, Sergei Bagapsh, who told the Interfax news agency that “the Abkhaz people have already opted for an independent state at a referendum and this choice should be respected.”

Bush took a careful stance on the biggest conflict right now between Russia and Georgia, the two Russian military bases on Georgian soil that the Georgians want removed. The two countries are in negotiations, but Saakashvili boycotted the 60th anniversary celebration in Red Square to protest a lack of progress. Bush said at the news conference that he had spoken to Putin about the matter.

“He reminded me that there is an agreement in place - a 1999 agreement,” Bush said. “He said that the Russians want to work with the government to fulfill their obligations in terms of that agreement. I think that’s a commitment that’s important for the people of Georgia to hear. It shows there’s grounds to work to get this issue resolved.”

Some discussion is also happening over on Irish Eagle. I tend to agree with Peter on this one, Georgia is important to US interests - NATO or no NATO. Energy supplies from the Caspian that do not go through volatile central Asia, or Russia, but instead via friendly Georgia, Azerbaijan, and NATO ally Turkey are, in my estimation at least, hugely important. Besides that Georgia is in a strategically important area, gateway to Europe and the Middle East - its only a 200km trek to the Iranian border (where believe it or not many people speak Georgian).

I reckon Georgia is important enough for the US to maintain a presence there almost indefinately - whether it comes to war with Russia or not is hard to say - but Georgia is certainly seeking a security guarantee in the form of NATO membership. The regions of Abkazia and Ossetia are certainly a problem for Saaskashvili - he has more or less staked his Presidency on bringing them back into the fold. The Russian airbases in question are perhaps more important to Russia than it lets on, the same bases were some of the most important during the Cold War.

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Yet Georgians do not seem to mind the fuss. “It’s great that he is coming. For a man like that, of such political prestige to come to our small country, that’s really outstanding. I and all my friends want to go and hear him speak,” said a student, Avtandil Murvanidze. “And we are getting a whole new beautiful city!” he added.

Is it me or does that make Georgians sound like uncritical plebs? Nowhere in the article are criticsms of Saakashvili or Bush - criticisms many Georgians are making. As one of my friends noted:

“Pash-ole von Bush. Pash-ole von Saakashvili, chen bozo-shvili”.

That’s actually two languages - ‘Fuck off Bush’. ‘Fuck off Saakashvili’ in Russian. And then ‘chen bozo-shvili’ is ‘you son-of-a-bitch’ in Georgian.

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