Vol. 73/No. 20      May 25, 2009

The war games began May 6 at a military base not far from the border with South Ossetia, where Russian troops have been stationed indefinitely since they effectively annexed the region from Georgia in August. The exercises will last for nearly a month and involve both member and non-member NATO forces.

NATO, a U.S.-led military alliance of the dominant imperialist powers of North America and Europe, was set up during the “Cold War” as a way to threaten the Soviet Union and other workers states. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, NATO has been used to carry out U.S. imperialism’s wars under the guise of “peacekeeping” or “fighting terror” while claiming to be an international force, as well as to maintain pressure on Moscow’s military aspirations.

Moscow and some of its allies refused an invitation to participate in the exercises, which they view as a challenge to Russia’s regional dominance. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has called the war games “an overt provocation.”

Last August Russian tanks and soldiers barreled across Georgia’s border into the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, then part of northern Georgia, on the pretense that the Georgian government had violated Ossetian and Abkhaz national sovereignty. Russian troops have maintained a military presence there since then.

Moscow and the governments of the breakaway territories signed a treaty April 30 that establishes joint patrols indefinitely along the border with the rest of Georgia. According to the New York Times, the pact grants Russia’s border guards any land or buildings needed to patrol the area and gives them many of the rights of Abkhaz and South Ossetian citizens.

That day two Russian ambassadors to NATO were expelled from the imperialist alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, in retaliation for an alleged case of spying. NATO officials accused the two Russians of being undercover intelligence agents connected to an Estonian official who was convicted in Estonia in February of passing NATO secrets to Moscow.

In response to the moves by NATO, the Russian government kicked out two Canadian diplomats representing NATO in Moscow May 6.

The day before the NATO exercises were to start, a tank battalion of some 500 Georgian soldiers mutinied at a base about 25 miles outside of Tbilisi. Within hours the troops had surrendered and the Georgian government had arrested several of the battalion’s commanders. Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili accused Moscow of instigating the mutiny to derail the planned NATO war exercises.

Moscow denied the accusations. A statement from the Russian’s foreign ministry said, “We would like to reiterate that Russia, as a matter of principal, doesn’t interfere in Georgia’s domestic affairs.”  
 
 
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