Information Related to "The Russian Bear Has Awakened"
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Seventy years ago Adolf Hitler's armies marched into Czechoslovakia, claiming they were responding to the desire of the German population of the Sudetenland to reunify with Germany. While other countries protested, no one lifted a finger to stop him. A few months later his troops swallowed up the whole of Czechoslovakia, followed not long after by most of Europe.
On Aug. 7, 2008, Russian armies marched into the Georgian province of South Ossetia, claiming they were responding to the desire of the ethnic Russian people there to reunify with the motherland. Other European countries and the United States have protested, but the reality is that none are in a position to do much of anything.
Russian policy since Joseph Stalin's time was to encourage Russians to resettle in its satellite states. This created the situation in Georgia where two provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, have large ethnic Russian populations (North Ossetia is part of the Russian Federation).
Russia used these populations to foment unrest-including regular artillery exchanges between South Ossetians and the Georgian military-to essentially lure the Georgian government into a trap. When Georgian troops moved into South Ossetia on Aug. 7 in response to recent provocations, Russian armored columns and aircraft quickly poured in to counterattack. Within two days they fully controlled the province.
But that wasn't enough. On Aug. 11 Russian forces drove forward from Abkhazia, Georgia's other province with a large Russian population, while others drove south from South Ossetia, cutting Georgia in half by capturing its main east-west highway and rail route. And while a cease-fire agreement was signed on Aug. 14 calling for both sides to pull back to prewar positions, at the time of this writing the Russians were digging in and appeared to have no intention of leaving soon.
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