Last time we were all watching a big event, Georgia attacked South Ossetia and Russia invaded Georgia. Thus, as we watch (vice) presidential debates and attempt to ignore political advertising in the coming runup to the next big election here, let's not let our attention drift too far from ominous-sounding Russian pronouncements:
"When people and military systems are used to kill Russian soldiers, it's a crime," Putin told reporters after meeting with Tymoshenko at his residence outside Moscow.
"Only a few years ago, it could not even come to mind, even in a nightmare, that Russians and Ukrainians would be fighting each other. But that happened, and it is a crime."
Russian officials and some Ukrainian lawmakers have said that Ukraine helped arm the pro-Western Georgia before the war. The Russian military has said that antiaircraft missiles supplied by Ukraine shot down four Russian warplanes during the conflict.
Putin said that arms sales may have continued even after the war began, and that some of the weapons had been operated by Ukrainians during the fighting. "The weapons could have been supplied during the military action, and it was operated by Ukrainian specialists," he said.
"That is a crime. That's an attempt to set Russian and Ukrainian people against each other."
The Tymoshenko in question is Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko, who is a direct rival to Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko.
This is mostly "leverage talk," but it's leverage talk from a country with actual leverage, both in the form of fuel supplies and in its recently proven willingness to roll into a neighboring country to beat them down.
Back in the fabled land of South Ossetia, a car bomb killed seven Russian troops. Interestingly, the bomb went off after the car was seized in the ethnically Georgian village of Ditsa, along with its cargo of Georgians, guns, and grenades. So either this is a super-clever way to get a bomb near some Russians, or they unwittingly picked up a crew going off to bomb something else entirely, leaving themselves in possession of a live bomb. The Georgian government is claiming this is a Russian "false flag" style operation, which, while not out of the question, would probably be done on a larger scale than this.
As it happens, Somali pirates might bring us all back together again. The Russian government has called for cooperation in dealing with piracy, as it sends the Neutrashimy to patrol the Gulf of Aden, where the Ukrainian freighter Faina and its shipment of tanks is still being held by pirates.