Word: georgian
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...Down a heavily potholed road, in some places splashed by mountain streams, the abandoned village of Eredvi comes into view. Populated by ethnic Georgians before the 2008 war, the village is now empty. Every house has been demolished and the villagers have all fled to Georgia. Plants grow between the heaps of bricks and stone. The school, which had been recently repaired before the war, today stands faded pink and windowless. Looters, whom locals claim do not exist, have stripped the place - even digging the wiring out of the walls. They have taken everything but the Georgian-language textbooks...
...part, Russia is accusing Georgia of planning aggressive action in the run-up to the war's anniversary on Aug. 7. "The Georgian leadership is plotting various events on the border with South Ossetia to coincide with the anniversary of the 2008 events in the Caucasus ... They are of a distinctly provocative nature," Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said on Wednesday, according to Russian news agency Itar-Tass. (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory...
...Georgian forces launched an early-morning assault on South Ossetia after days of clashes between Moscow and Tbilisi over the fate of the breakaway republic and that of Abkhazia, another republic that had declared independence from Georgia following wars in the early 1990s. Hours after the attack, Russia responded with what the West condemned as a "disproportionate" use of force. Within five days, Russian forces had driven Georgian troops out of South Ossetia and into central Georgia. During the war, international human-rights groups accused Georgia of indiscriminately shelling civilian areas and Russia of allowing the ethnic cleansing of Georgian...
...still displaced on both sides of the border. Russia has pledged $640 million in aid for reconstruction, while Tbilisi owes $4.5 billion to the West in postwar aid and loans. Since the end of the war, 240 unarmed European Union monitors have been patrolling the border on the Georgian side to ensure that the terms of the cease-fire brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy are not broken. But they have not been given access to the Russian-patrolled South Ossetian side of the border and so cannot confirm the reported provocations or back up any of the accusations Russia...
...Whether or not it turns out to be justified, Russia and Georgia's blame game could have tragic consequences. During his recent visit to Tbilisi, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden stressed that "there is no military option to [South Ossetia and Abkhazia's] reintegration [into Georgia]," and according to Georgian National Security Council Secretary Eka Tkeshelashvili, Biden told him that the U.S. is now carrying out "preventive diplomacy so the situation does not deteriorate." But if what Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Karasin said on Wednesday is true and "no one can give us any guarantee that there will...