Apparently doing politics and knowing some Russian qualifies me to throw in my 2 kopeks (which is quite a bit less than 2 cents), so here goes. The German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that (and I paraphrase) it is ‘unclear which side is the aggressor in this conflict’. Now he knows perfectly well that that’s a complete and utter load of bullfrogs (though he’s a properly lefty socialist so it’s possible he actually believes this stuff) – Georgia invaded South Ossetia, which, as every blogger from here to Svalbard has pointed out, including of course the ever-excellent Devil’s Kitchen, is as yet legally part of Georgia, because the local rebels were getting on their nerves. Let me put this in some kind of domestic context (which is hard, since the UK isn’t exactly surrounded by superpowers) – let’s say the Channel Islands suddenly decide they dislike the UK government (not hard to see why, but unlikely even in theory) and rebel. Obviously the first thing that the government would do (if they’re not too busy writing books, that is) once they’d extracted their heads from their respective… newspapers… is send in a body of redcoats (or possibly a more modern equivalent). Clear so far? Good.
