This week in the United Nations, the bad blood between Russia and Georgia continued, as Russia complained about the deaths of two of its military officers and Georgia, in turn, asked what Russian officers were doing on formally Georgian soil.
Here's the argument in a nutshell:
"One has to wonder -- what was a vice colonel of the Russian military doing in the Georgian forests, organizing and leading a group of armed insurgents on a mission of terror?" the Georgian leader said.
Immediately following Saakashvili's speech, Russia's ambassador to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, told reporters that the men were instructors at an "anti-terrorist training center" and were killed Sept. 20 by knife wounds and gunshots to the head.
This isn't the first time the Georgians have done something about Russians in breakaway Georgian territories. Just shy of a year ago, they detained two Russian "peacekeepers" in South Ossetia.
Although the Abkhazian conflict chiefly makes the news in its "role" as a proxy war between Russia and Georgia, it has an entirely different "life" online. Much like the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Abkhazian conflict is played out in great detail and with much acrimony on YouTube, with videos coming from both sides.
This video from a pro-Georgian poster gives us a list of Georgians tortured and killed by Abkhazians as part of a "genocide" against Georgians:
Other videos have shown ethnic Georgians being pressed into forced labor on farms by armed Abkhazians.
This video from a pro-Abkhazian poster is simply a grab of a news story concerning a firefight between Georgian and Abkhazian troops that left several Abkhazians dead, but with the appended title "Abkhazian Soldiers are Kidnapped by Puppet Republic Georgia."
As much as I've read about the Abkhazian conflict (which started with a war of separation in the early 90s), I'm unclear on who Georgia is supposed to be a puppet of. If anyone can make a claim of puppetry, it's the Georgians, who can point to Russian advisers hanging out in both the Abkhazian and South Ossetian zones.
It's unclear what influence, if any, these YouTube wars have on the real wars they're prompted by, but they do serve as a far more accurate window into the thought processes of everyone involved than any reporting I've seen. Certainly, if you can stomach it, the comments on these videos tell of the level of distrust and anger present in parties to the conflict -- much as they did during the summer war, and much as I expect they will continue to do as this form of personalized reporting and propaganda continues to be so easy and accessible.