The tenor of the past few days of Izvestia's coverage of the Russia-Georgia conflagration seems to be encapsulated by these headlines, which are up on izvestia.ru as I type:
"Our tanks came like a flood of steel" [[ Steel (adj.) in Russian: "stalinii" -- so one could interpret the metatext here as "the tanks came into South Ossetia with the power of Stalin"]]
"Medvedev believes Georgia's actions in South Ossetia are genocide"
"Tblisi ready for immediate talks with Russia"
"Russian peacekeepers reinforce grouping in Abkazia"
"American mercenary captured in South Ossetia"
"Western weapons kill civilians" -- First couple grafs read in part:
...[T]he Georgian army is one of the most prepared in the post-Soviet space. In large part thanks to [its] Western friends.
Most Georgian officers and ordinary infantry have been trained in the US and Turkey, or under instructors from these nations. Under the American program, more than eight thousand Georgian infantry. Over the past four years, military expenditures have grown 30%, accounting for 9-10% of GDP (in Russia, 2.9%), and the overall military budget for 2008 is almost one billion [[rubles? dollars?]] This is quite a lot for the state, which is receiving a significant part of military-technical assistance from abroad. Among the countries providing such aid to Tblisi are: the US, Turkey, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Ukraine.
Leave a comment