Georgia War

Georgian refugees from Abkhazia ask whether they will ever be able to go home

 

On a visit to the separatist republic of Abkhazia a week before the Russia-Georgia war in August 2008, openDemocracy/Russia editor Zygmunt Dzieciolowski was aware of growing tension. If war did break out, the locals knew that they would be the ones who paid the price.

There can be no Russia-Georgia rapprochement

The latest round in the conflict between Georgia and Russia/South Ossetia is a propaganda war

Tanya Lokshina presents a major report by Human Rights Watch

It is time for a larger vision for the Caucasus that can provide hope of inclusive progress in the face of many obstacles

 

In defiance of the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan, Russian troops are not allowing international observers into the mountainous region of Akhalgori/ Leningori, east of Tskhinvali. But Varvara Pakhomenko of the human rights organisation Demos managed to reach this place which, though 80% Georgian, technically belongs in South Ossetia.

 

The currents of solidarity and fissure in the Caucasus mosaic elude Russia's control

The next American president, together with the efforts from European allies, must address failed strategies of the past in order to prevent the West (and Georgia for that matter) from stumbling into an expanded war in the Caucasus. 

"The house has only just burnt down." The aged Georgian villagers of South Ossetia need help 

The ex-president's combative outlook has shaped Russia's policy towards Georgia and the west

Georgia must turn to the past to find the future

A stunning report from South Ossetia's capital. Plus: Ivan Sukhov on Russia's post-war Caucasus trouble, Inal Khashig on the west's Abkhaz lesson, Zygmunt Dzieciolowski on Sukhumi's independence case

Russia 19th-century thinking could yet snatch defeat from its 21st-century victory in Georgia

Russia's Caucasus policy means domestic trouble, says Ivan Sukhov

 

The west is responsible for the outcome it opposes

A new Black Sea state emerges from the Georgia-Russia war. But how independent is it?

 

Now the fighting is over what matters is not surrendering to conspiracy theorists or isolationism, but arriving at sensible compromises, polit.ru's editor writes from Moscow

openRussia takes off: Zygmunt Dzieciolowski in Sukhumi meets Abkhazia's president, while Boris Dolgin in Russia looks at the lessons of a dirty war for both sides

The new Caucasus war exposes the problem of Georgia - and of western myths about the country