[X] My Assistant

[CanRay]

Schoolyard Intimidation Games... With explosives!

Which, come to think of it, reminds me of my own Schoolyard.

The joys of living in a Mining Town.

[Kozbot]

I thought I'd chime in as I'm doing a research project that touches on the Georgians, Abkhazians, Adzhars, and numerous other ethnic groups that are banging around Georgia, which also includes a fair sized Russian minority. The USSR was pretty good about spreading Russians everywhere they had any strategic interests, now I know several treaties have been signed by all parties that lets Russia defend the ethnic Russians in Georgia and typically that's been taken as allowing Russia to do whatever the hell it wants there so it'd be tough to make a solid claim that there was a violation of international law. Russia could even claim that it shot down the UAV to prevent a the Georgian military from gaining intel on their troop positions, as far as I know the Abkhaz Autonomous Region doesn't have much in the way of a military and is still reliant on a Russian contingent for support. Though this of course doesn't prevent Russia from selling weapons to the Georgians.

All of that said this is pretty typical international politics/posturing. Russia used to be a super power and isn't anymore but they still like to push things as far as they can. The pertinent international bodies that could do anything are either negated (think the UN) or occupied (think NATO) and with Bush having apparently put the US on auto-pilot till the end of this term they really have nothing to lose and every thing to gain.