Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Kremlin: "It depends on how you define 'invasion'..."

Mancunian-in-Mexico The Exile is continuing his coverage of the conflict in Georgia with stiff denials that the Russians are up to anything. The 50 tanks reported rolling into Gori this morning were, according to him, just a military resupply column that 'got lost.'

In 1939 a German military resupply column 'got lost' all the way to Krakow.

In all honesty, I don't think Russia's trying to take over Georgia any more. They might not even head towards the capital, Tbilisi. All they're doing is making the Georgians, Americans and Europeans very clear who is in charge down there.

The Russians are swarming all over Georgian territory. That much is a fact. All these photos were taken today, in Georgian territory, by Reuters and Associated Press reporters.

Is it an invasion? Possibly not. What it is is a buttload of Russian soldiers, tanks and trucks slap-bang in the middle of Georgia - where the Russians cynically claim they're not.

I think the political term for this is 'inplausible deniability.'
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These guys are seperatist militia from South Ossetia - driving Russian military vehicles past convoys of Georgian refugees.

To the untrained eye, these pictures might seem to show a convoy of Russian tanks rolling through Georgian territory. Rest assured, both the Russians and The Exile know better. They're just a figment of your imagination.

Here are pictures of the poor, lost 'resupply convoy' that the big, nasty Associated Press misrepresented as a heavily armed military convoy rolling through Gori this morning.

Although one of the Russians in this convoy yelled to a reporter: "We're going to Tbilisi!" they apparently started heading off in a completely different direction - lending weight to The Exile's theory that they plugged the wrong address into their Tom Tom GPS.

4 comments:

Trixie said...

Urgh, war totally makes my stomach feel violently ill. Why oh why can't we just all live in peace?

Yeah yeah, I know, I sound like I should be a hippy from the seventies.

Ken said...

Er, no, try not to twist my words. The tanks around Gori were one column that seems to have spent its time warning folk about the impending arrival of the militiamen. The other column which featured on the news reports is the one that seems to have got lost.

Please try and keep up.

Anonymous said...

Hungary 1956 says all there is to know about Russian 'ceasefires'.

Mycroft,
Oxford

Nick said...

Lost or not, that column was in Georgia though - and there was coercion of the local population, and this after the ceasefire.