[…] To the Russian embassy in Tbilisi they brought old refrigerators, toilets, rolls of toilet paper, irons, bottles of vodka, forks and spoons, clothes and other objects that [looters from the Russian army] took interest in during their visits to private houses of Georgians, state institutions, military bases and army barracks.

People are coming up to have a closer look, shake their heads, laugh. Cars that are passing by are honking…

[six photos]

Tbilisi-based LJ user tony-geo wrote critically (RUS) about the stunt:

“Let's Feed the Russian Army” Action

The action itself is, of course, a powerful PR weapon. But only as long as many Russians get to know about it. I suspect, however, that neither [Vremya news show on Channel 1], nor [Vesti news show on RTR] are going to cover this action.

Here's what I mean. A Russian woman, mother of a Georgian officer, horrified, says that her mother in [Kaliningrad] has no idea whatsoever of what's going on in Georgia and thinks that the Georgian army is still attacking Tskhinvali, which is being courageously defended by the Soviet army. Thank God, she hasn't put a curse on her grandson, who is killing Russian soldiers in that Tskhinvali.

I confirm this report. I talked to my sister in Russia yesterday. Formally, my sister is Georgian, but she was born and grew up in Russia, just like myself, and has only spent a total of a few weeks in Georgia in the 30 years of her life. But she kept her Georgian maiden name when she got married […]. Anyway, she's also clueless about what's going on. Most ordinary people do not use the internet and satellite TV to get reliable news - they are watching what the [Russian state-owned channels] are showing. So why should it be surprising that this majority firmly believes that the Russian troops have not stepped outside Tskhinvali […]?

But this isn't my point. In a kindergarten [in one of Tbilisi's neighborhoods], there are 110 refugee families with lots of children. Social aid hasn't made it there. They put them there and that's it, if there's time - we'll help you. At this kindergarten, unlike at the school in the same area, there are children's beds at least. Most people sleep on the floor. There are no blankets and mattresses. They eat what they can buy on the money they've got left. As you understand, they don't have much money left. Yesterday, food was delivered just once to this kindergarten. Stale bread. For 110 families - seven kilos of sugar.

Last night, I took a sack with children's clothes, which I had planned to take to the central donation point […], to this kindergarten. We (along with my neighbors) also took 20 kilos of sugar and one and a half kilo of butter there. Today I've brought them fruit, milk, [matsoni] and diapers.

Georgians, damn it, enough of the information war. Look out of the window, there are kindergartens and schools packed with refugees out there. First, take what you can to them, and then go to the Russian embassy. […]

Alim Atenbek is upset with the uniform of the Kazakhstani team [ru]:

Officials always want to make a buck on everything, and the Olympiad is not an exclusion. The government allocated 68 milion tenge for 226 kits - or 2,500 US dollars for each - but eventually the quality of fabric and tailoring was so bad that they had to remake it hastily. The tender for sale of tours to Beijing Olympics was very dubious too - a barely known tourist firm won it.

KZBlog also notes poor quality of the uniform, saying that

“the blazers have huge shoulder pads that make all the athletes look like little kids wearing Daddy’s business suits. And the orange skirts and little hats are way too bright on their own. The combination of white, bright blue and bright orange is a little hard to take!”

Mantrov-kz posts a list of money awards, announced by the government of Kazakhstan for the medalists (gold medal is worth 250,000 dollars), and marks out that the Azerbaijani president promised $720,000 for each medal won by his sportsmen: “Here we have already lost”, he notes [ru]. However, the overall performance of the Kazakh team is pretty good - as of now 8 medals is already in the Kazakhstan's “piggy bank”. This amount is the same to the result of Kazakhstan on the Athenes Olympics. Wondernews found out a curious thing [ru]:

If the CIS republics performed as a single “soviet” team, they would have won the first place by the amount of medals in Beijing!

Meanwhile, epolet, a prominent political blogger in Kazakhstan, could not resist the temptation to draw attention to the political component [ru]:

All presidents of the Central Asian countries (Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Karimov of Uzbekistan, akiyev of Kyrgyzstan, Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan and Rakhmon of Tajikistan) have come to Beijing to watch the opening ceremony. Five countries were living without their presidents these days.

Cross-posted on neweurasia.

Like most other contemporary conflicts, the ongoing one in Georgia and South Ossetia has had a virtual dimension from its very start. Below are two bloggers' reflections on the wars raging outside the actual conflict zones.

LJ user basya - Ksenia Basilashvili, journalist with Radio Echo of Moscow and daughter of Russian actor Oleg Basilashvili - wrote this (RUS) about her family's origin and the coverage of the war by Russian and Western TV channels:

[…] When I hear [the word “Tskhinval“], I always think about my family's roots, about this faraway land - what should I call it? And I imagine the soil warmed up by the sun, a hot [lavash flatbread] right out of the oven, red pungent homemade wine… I think of how my humble grandfather packed and left for Moscow, and how he received education there and ended up heading the [College of Communications]. […]

I'm watching [the Russian state-owned RTR's Vesti news show and Channel 1]. The dead, the injured, refugees, ruined buildings, pale children and old people in the basements.

I'm watching BBC and CNN - the dead, the injured, refugees, ruined buildings, pale children and old people in the basements.

Death and misery.

There is no difference between the pictures. Only [the former] are showing Tskhinval, and [the latter] are showing [Gori], [the former] are presenting this slaughter of civilians as “the aggression of Georgia against South Ossetia,” while [the latter are presenting it as] “the aggression of Russia against Georgia.” It's as if the TV channels have taken position in the trenches and know for sure what's going on. As if they know who the enemy, the devil, is. For us it's Georgia, for them it's Russia. And the truth is somewhere near…

Would be good to mix CNN and Vesti in one glass, it would make a great news channel, with the views of two, three, four sides [of the conflict].

I don't want to discuss here why they were at one point giving out [Russian passports to South Ossetians], who was the first one to start it all, who gave the orders, who is guilty. Who are the good ones and the bad ones.

Now it does not matter at all anymore. Because while the political and informational wars are taking place, over there - in South Ossetia, in Georgia - people are dying and suffering. […]

Here's one of the comments (RUS) to this post:

homo_loquens:

Ksenia, please tell me, have you spent more than five minutes watching CNN and BBC? Haven't you seen a BBC interview with [Russia's foreign affairs minister Sergei Lavrov] and a CNN interview with [Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN], and regular live reports from Moscow on the position of [PM Vladimir Putin and president Dmitry Medvedev] on both channels? […] Because you are not the first one of those who seem normal and bright to me, who are writing this, and I'm already beginning to wonder if I'm perhaps hallucinating - or do I have some different CNN and BBC broadcasting at my home?

LJ user pepsikolka - Samira Kuznetsova, a resident of [Poti], whose other posts have been featured on Global Voices here and here - wrote this (RUS) about her recent experience at the Russian-language social networking portal, Odnoklassniki.ru (”Classmates”):

There used to be a nice, peaceful, kind group at Odnoklassniki.ru site, [devoted to the city of Poti]. Tengo and I were posting lots of pictures there, and others weren't lazy, too. We interacted, joked, shared memories of the past. There was not a single day that I didn't write something in this group.

We were united by our city. Some people still live in it, for others it's the city of their childhood, where they spent their happiest years […].

I was taking a special pleasure in [photographing] a window on the third floor of the “jeans house,” the so-called Pentagon neighborhood, a willow tree on the Rioni river and the old swimming pool in our school's courtyard.

Adult people were happy as kids.

- Here, here I used to walk with my girlfriend.
- And here we used to go fishing.
- And on this bench we played lotto.
- Oy, here's my window, I used to sit for hours in front of it, waiting for mama to return from work.
- Samira, take a picture of this and that.
- Oy, the Pioneers' House and a puddle as big as 20 years years ago.

Now there is war at this forum. A wall of misunderstanding, reproaches, accusations, abuse, and people are deserting it like refugees. Today, an acquaintance of mine has written me to say that she's leaving the group. As if there was no love and nostalgia yesterday. Today it's a battlefield.

[…]

My former neighbor is screaming that we are NATO's servants. And she hates us for that.

And she used to teach me to play the piano. […]

He wrote (RUS):

I'm not referring to Georgia now.

The Russian government has used every serious crisis as a reason for yet another tightening of the screws and strengthening of its own positions. After the [Moscow apartment blasts of 1999], the [Second Chechen War] began, and Putin came to power. After [the 2000 Kursk submarine disaster] and then [the Nord-Ost theater siege in 2002], [ORT and NTV TV channels] were finally suppressed. After [Beslan school siege of 2004], regional elections were canceled.

What is the regime up to now?

Here are a few comments to this post:

oleg_kozyrev:

- Control of the internet

varfolomeev66:

Considering that there's almost nothing uncontrolled left, this is possible.

humanist_us:

They'll tighten the remaining screws on the internet.

And [Radio Echo of Moscow] ;)

Though you were definitely trying hard not to annoy our two dwarfs [with your coverage of the crisis]

Blogging from Tbilisi, LJ user oleg-panfilov - Oleg Panfilov of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations - posted the day's summary on his blog and explained (RUS) what the five-day crisis might mean for Georgia politically:

Today was the day of emotions.

First, an incredibly huge rally in the center of Tbilisi and people crying during Saakashvili's address.

Second, a day of waiting, while the politicians were discussing and expressing opinions on Georgia and its relations with Russia.

And finally, Georgia's departure from [CIS, the Commonwealth of Independent States]. For now, in the form of a political statement, but after a while, in a matter of a few days, Russia will automatically turn into an occupying force not just formally, but legally as well, because it will lose its status of a “peacekeeper” on behalf of CIS. And then, in accordance with all international laws, any presence of [Russian] troops on the territory of South Ossetia and Abkhazia can be recognized as illegal.

To put it differently, yet another military adventure has turned into [a nothing].

I don't know what kind of thinking overwhelmed Russian military commanders (of course, if there was any thinking involved at all), but Georgia has managed to endure and avoided getting back into the state it was in during the Soviet times. That is, a state of a [”large shashlyk restaurant”] for the Russian nomenclature.

If we analyze what's happened, we'll find many arguments both in favor of Georgia, and in favor of the imperial ways of today's Kremlin. One thing is clear, though - Georgia is not going to turn into a different country, it has tasted freedom in the past five years, has tasted democracy, despite the fact that many people do not like it.

Now it's up to other remnants of the Soviet empire whether they are going to continue living the way they did or will learn from Georgia.

Tomorrow is another day of waiting.

Below are a few comments:

mormegil11:

Georgia has lost South Ossetia and Abkhazia. When euphoria ends, gray everyday life will begin - without money transfers from [relatives working in] Moscow, without sea and air transport connection [with Russia], without working banks - and then the size of the catastrophe will grow larger than the size of the naive and excited crowd at the rally.

This war has no [winners or losers]. There is guilt, a feeling of enormous guilt before the dead ones: Georgians, Russians, Ossetians, Ukrainians, Dutch… And what is membership in CIS, or NATO, or anyplace else compared to this guilt…

rousyn:

“without money transfers from [relatives working in] Moscow”

Re-orientation of labor migration to the West? Isn't his progress? […]

realpushkin:

Oleg, you are wrong, unfortunately. […]

1) NATO countries and allies in general are not going to get themselves involved in a war with Russia, if it happens again - this is [counterproductive] for everyone.

2) Abkhazia and South Ossetia are not going to become part of Georgia even as autonomies - most likely, Russia will recognize their independence.

3) If it is proved that civilians died in Tskhinvali because of [the use of Grad multiple-launch rocket system] - Saakashvili will not have a chance to join [any organization]. […]