Is Russia getting overconfident? Having beaten down Georgia, the Russians have the chance to claim the South Ossetia region, where they’ve been agitating and issuing Georgians Russian passports, for quite a few years. Georgian President Saakashvili has signed a rather weak cease-fire agreement that leaves his country open to further Russian aggression. They have, very clearly won a healthy chunk of Georgia for themselves.
Still, the Russians continue their invasion, today pushing farther into Georgia than they’ve been all week.
The Ukraine has told Russia that it will likely put rules into place to severely restrict Russian warships operating out of Sevastopol and in Ukrainian territorial waters. That port is the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and without it, Russia will not have the ability to project naval power into that region and the Middle East. The Russians, as they have been all week, were not merely defiant, but outright dismissive. This does not seem to be a prudent move, considering the man who made the threat has to look in the mirror every day at a face scarred by Russian poison.
But Russia has not toned down its aggressive rhetoric.
Hot on the heels of a deal between the US and Poland to install a missile defense base there, Russia has threatened a nuclear strike on Poland. Yes, that’s right. Russia threatened to nuke Poland. The quote here is unambiguous.
General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the Russian armed forces’ deputy chief of staff, issued the extraordinary threat in an interview with Interfax, a Russian news agency.
“Poland, by deploying [the system] is exposing itself to a strike – 100 per cent,” he was quoted as saying…
Russia seems to be going out of its way to antagonize as many of its former satellite states as it can as well as the normally incredibly meek European Union. I am not sure why since the reactions have been exactly the opposite of the sort of fawning fear Russia normally wants from its vassals.
Victor Davis Hanson, one of the keenest geopolitical observers we have is counseling…
Patience…
We are a little more than a week into the crisis, and already Russia has already gotten itself more than just fights with Georgia—but also issued creepy threats to Poland over missiles, and to the Ukraine over naval bases. Putin has galvanized into panic most of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, prompted a radical change of policy in the United States, and embarrassed its once sure support from the appeasement bloc of the European Union. What will next week bring? A Georgian insurgency, replete with stingers, anti-tank guns, and ieds? Increased arms sales to the former republics? Tougher talk from Obama?
I have to wonder if Vladimir Putin is overplaying his hand. It possible that he’s playing for a goal we’ve yet to see, but the events of the past day just don’t make sense.
(Photo via Time Magazine, which named him Person of the Year for 2007)
Tags: Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, Poland, Russia, South Ossetia, Ukraine, Victor Davis Hanson, Viktor Yuschenko, Vladimir Putin
