The bad old days, once again?
Pravda comments about the situation in South Ossetia and sounds just like the Pravda from the bad old days of the USSR:
The international community collectively held their breath waiting for the reaction of Russia after the savage, brutal, criminal attack by Georgia on South Ossetia. After having offered a cease fire in hostilities, the back stabbing Georgians immediately violated the cease fire, invading South Ossetia and causing massive destruction and death among innocent civilians, among peacekeepers and also destroying a hospital…
Relating what has become common practice among war criminals, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reported: “A Russian humanitarian convoy has come under fire. Panic is growing among the local population, and the number of refugees is increasing. There are reports of ethnic cleansing in some villages…The situation is ripe for a humanitarian catastrophe.”
So we now are told of “the savage, brutal, criminal attack by Georgia,” at least as Pravda would have it (to be fair, it does appear to have been foolish). Question: what does it benefit a country of 4.4 million to wage “brutal, criminal attacks” that provoke retaliation by a country 30x its size with 18,000 nuclear warheads? The Russian bear seems to be awake once again. Maybe Pravda will resurrect its old rhetoric about the “peaceloving peoples of the world” and similar claptrap from the days of the USSR. (HT: Powerline)
Edward Lucas says what he believes is really at stake in the London Times: “The biggest threat Russia poses to Europe is the Kremlin’s monopoly on energy export routes to the West from the former Soviet Union. The one breach in that is the (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) oil and gas pipeline that leads from energy-rich Azerbaijan to Turkey, across Georgia. If Georgia falls, Europe’s hopes of energy independence from Russia fall too.” Plutocracy is different from Communism, but everything else seems to be pretty similar to the bad old days.
UPDATE
Some information about the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from a BBC report:
The 1,737 km-long pipeline will have the capacity of 1m barrels a day, and cost of transportation $3.2 per barrel. BTC is said to be an effective alternative to Russia’s pipeline network.
Ms Bayatly says the BTC is not going to compete with the Russian pipelines but rather enhance the existing network. However, oil experts believe political considerations played a major role in the choice of the route.
American officials prefer a route that would weaken Russia’s stranglehold on regional pipeline network and leave Iran on the sidelines. Local governments want less dependency on big regional powers, too.
“This pipeline is of strategic importance not only to Azerbaijan, but to the other new independent states as well”, says Ilham Shaban, oil analyst in Baku. “This is a reliable way to the world markets.”…
Not anymore.