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A Georgian Cabinet minister said on Tuesday that his country is very close to war with Russia over Abkhazia, a region in Georgia’s northwest that wants to secede formally from Georgia. A leader of the Abkhazian movement, its foreign minister, said that Abkhazia was ready to hand over military control to the Russians. The Russians are, of course, already in Abkhazia, and announced last week that they have been doubling the number of troops they have there, something the Georgians claim is aggression against Georgia. The Russians claimed that the Georgians were the ones massing troops along the Georgian-Abkhaz border. The White House issued a statement saying that “The Russian government has taken what we would call provocative actions which have increased tensions with Georgia over its separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” another breakaway region.
There are three factors driving all of this. First, there is Kosovo. When the United States and Europe imposed — from the Russian point of view — independence on Kosovo, in defiance of Serb or Russian wishes, it was clear that the Russians would have to respond. When they declined to respond in Kosovo itself, their next option was to extend the Kosovo precedent to an area where it would involve an American ally. Georgia was an obvious choice. Like Kosovo, it has regions that want to be independent from a relatively small country. By supporting this process, the Russians impose a quid pro quo on the United States in particular.
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