Russia moving launchers into S Ossetia
Russia is moving launchers for short-range ballistic missiles into South Ossetia, the breakaway region of Georgia, in an apparent effort to tighten its control over it, following the recent military confrontation with Georgia, a media report said on Monday.
Citing American officials familiar with intelligence reports, the New York Times said that Moscow had deployed several SS-21 missile launchers and supply vehicles to South Ossetia on Friday. From the new launching positions north of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, the missiles can reach much of Georgia, including Tbilisi, the capital, it added.
Russia’s efforts to strengthen its military position in the region, the paper said, have important political and military implications.
American officials have demanded that Russian troops pull back from their positions inside Georgia and that the Russian military presence in the enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia be limited to the Russian peacekeeping force that was there before the conflict erupted earlier this month.
Ultimately, they want the Russian peacekeepers replaced by a neutral, international peacekeeping force.
But instead of thinning out their forces in South Ossetia, the Times said, the Russians appear to have been consolidating their presence there by deploying SS-21 missile launchers and by installing surface-to-air missiles near their military headquarters in Tskhinvali, American officials said.
Such moves appear to buttress assertions last week by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V Lavrov, that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are to be separated from Georgia, the paper noted.