Last week Georgian opposition parties prepared to mount street protests to force President Mikhail Saakashvili to resign, while Russian forces began military exercises in the Caucasus that might be a direct preparation for an intervention in Georgia -in response to the country being further destabilized. Massive rallies by opposition supporters have not forced Saakashvili to yield and tension is mounting in Tbilisi (EDM, April 14).

The possibility that radical elements on either side of the political divide in Georgia might provoke violence is high, while Russia seems to be ready to intervene to defend a brotherly Christian Orthodox Georgian nation from the Saakashvili regime, which it considers as an ultimate enemy. After the war with Georgia last August, President Dmitry Medvedev declared in an interview with Italian RAI TV, "For us president Saakashvili does not exist, he is a ...

After the Russian and Western main stream media spent the whole day on Thursday reporting the  end of the war in Ichkeria following the official cessation of the so called counter-terrorism operation in the occupied vilayyat Nokhchiycho (Ichkeria) of the Caucasus Emirate, a significant explanation was made public in the evening regarding the cancellation of the war.

As it turns out the war was not ended quite in its entirety; the so called local counter-terrorism operations "will continue in the mountains and foothills of Chechnya"

This statement was made by representatives of the Russian special services operating in the occupied territories of the Caucasus Emirate.

"Even though the general counter-terrorism operation in the territory of Chechnya has been officially ended, local counter-terrorism operations will be carried on in the following mountain and foothill regions of the rpublic: Nzhay-Yurtovsky, Vedensky, ...