As he sips coffee at an outdoor cafe in the capital of the Georgian breakaway republic of South Ossetia, Roland Kelekshayev describes how he keeps an AK-47 automatic rifle in his home, oiled and ready for use.
"If necessary, not just I but the whole of our people will stand up and fight," said the 32-year-old Ossetian. "Either we will exist as a nation or they will wipe us from the face of the earth."
This tiny territory of 70,000 people nestling on the southern slopes of the Caucasus mountains is preparing for war.
South Ossetia has enjoyed de facto independence from Georgia since fighting a separatist war in the early 1990s but in the past few weeks, the uneasy truce which followed that conflict has started to unravel. Almost nightly, Georgian and South Ossetian troops exchange gunfire. In the latest flare-up last week, several servicemen on both sides were reported to have been wounded after a night-long gun battle.
When they are not shooting at each other, Georgian and South Ossetian forces man roadblocks and unceremoniously arrest anyone who arouses suspicion.
So far, no one has been killed. Both sides say they want a peaceful solution. But in this tinderbox atmosphere, many fear that it is just a matter of time before full-scale hostilities break out.
"This is the prologue to a war which would make Chechnya look small," Znaur Gassiyev, speaker of South Ossetia's separatist parliament, said in Tskhinvali.
If that happens, the repercussions will reach far beyond this obscure corner of Europe. South Ossetia's separatists are backed -- tacitly at least -- by Russia while Georgia's receive military assistance from the US and UK.
"Everyone will get dragged in," predicted the speaker.
For Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, his country's territorial integrity is at stake.
The 36-year-old former New York lawyer has said he will not allow a separatist regime in the heart of Georgia: Tskhinvali lies just 85km from the capital, Tbilisi.
Saakashvili claims South Ossetia is little more than a smuggling racket, making fat profits bringing in contraband from Russia.
"People are telling us that the Georgian flag cannot be raised in the ... middle of Georgia," Saakashvili said recently. "We are ready to fight like mad for the restoration of our territorial integrity."
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS