Prometheus 6

Russia Recognizes Breakaway Georgian Regions
By Philip P. Pan and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 26, 2008; 9:16 AM

MOSCOW, Aug. 26 -- President Dmitry Medvedev recognized the independence of two breakaway regions of Georgia on Tuesday and called on other nations to do the same, escalating what has become one of the most serious conflicts between Russia and the United States since the end of the Cold War.

In a statement broadcast live on national television, Medvedev said he signed decrees recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia because it was the "only way to protect people's lives." He said Russia had tried for years to resolve the ethnic conflict between Georgia and the two provincesthrough peaceful negotiations but that Georgia's pro-Western president, Mikhail Saakashvili, made a negotiated settlement impossible by trying to seize South Ossetia by military force and slaughter its residents.

The Georgian government "made its choice in the early hours of August 8," he said, referring to a military operation launched by Saakashvili earlier this month to try to quell a separatist movement in South Ossetia. The move prompted a Russian incursion deep into Georgian territory. "Saakashvili chose genocide for resolving his political problems. Saakashvili has thus killed every hope for peaceful coexistence of Ossetians, Abkhazians and Georgians within one country," Medvedev said.

Russia's unilateral recognition of the separatist provinces over the objections of the United States and Georgia's other Western allies, following a five-day rout of Georgian forces by the vastly larger Russian military, represented a bold re-assertion of Moscow's power over a region it considers part of its sphere of influence and that its leaders worry has tilted too far toward the West. The Kremlin has singled out Saakashvili, perhaps the most pro-American political leader in the neighborhood, as a menace, and some analysts say Russia's recent moves are aimed at undermining him if not toppling him from power entirely.