Paul Goble
Vienna, July 1 – As Moscow continues a military exercise in the North Caucasus that it says is designed to prevent conflicts, one leading Russian expert says that the probability of a new war between Russia and Georgia may be as high as 80 percent, while another suggests that such predictions themselves constitute “a dangerous provocation.”
Because Moscow’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 followed summer Russian military maneuvers in the North Caucasus, its current maneuvers in the region have led many in Moscow, Tbilisi and elsewhere to speculate that the course of events last summer will be repeated during this one.
In an article on the Kavkaz-uzel.ru portal today, two leading analysts square off on the likelihood of a new military conflict, with Sergey Markedonov, a leading Russian specialist on the Caucasus, arguing there is unlikely to be a war and Pavel Felgengauer, a prominent military affairs commentator, presenting the ...