An anti-Georgian campaign built up steam in Russia yesterday as the authorities followed up sweeping sanctions on neighboring Georgia with measures targeting the large diaspora in Moscow.
Russian lawmakers also tabled a motion expected to fiercely condemn Georgia's pro-Western leadership with the dispute set to persist after Russia rejected Western calls to end its blockade of its small, impoverished Caucasus neighbor.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said a transport and postal blockade slapped on Tbilisi on Tuesday would still stand despite the release by Georgia, on Monday, of four Russian officers whose arrest last week angered the Kremlin.
Lavrov said on Tuesday the measures were aimed at cutting off criminal flows of money he claimed was being used by the Georgian leadership to increase its military might in preparation for the "forceful seizure" of two pro-Russian breakaway regions.
But the real aim appeared to be to punish Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili for his defiance of Russia through the detention of its officers on spying charges. The dispute also reflects Kremlin alarm at Tbilisi's goal of NATO membership and the growing US influence in its former Soviet backyard.
A Kremlin official said the sanctions -- a suspension of air, road, maritime, rail and postal links -- would not be lifted until Georgia ended its "hostile rhetoric" towards Russia.
"The range of measures are a response to the situation and consequently their duration will depend on how long the hostile rhetoric [of the Georgian leadership] continues," Modest Kolerov, the Russian presidential administration's official charged with regional relations, said.
Later this week, the Russian parliament is set to consider a bill that would allow the government to bar Georgians living in Russia from sending money home -- which would deal a huge blow to Georgia's struggling economy.
According to some estimates, approximately 1 million of Georgia's 4.4 million population work in Russia and their families rely on the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual remittances.
Piling on the pressure, authorities in the Russian capital on Tuesday closed a popular casino and raided a hotel and a couple of restaurants run by Georgians, saying they could be closed over legal violations.
The Kommersant daily quoted police officials as saying that 40 Georgian restaurants and shops in downtown Moscow alone would be raided in the next few days. The Russian consulate in Tbilisi has also stopped issuing visas to Georgians.
"The patriotic campaign [in Russia] has begun," the Kommersant wrote on its front page, above photographs of posters of Saakashvili with a Hitler-like mustache.
At the UN, Russia ratcheted up diplomatic pressure on Georgia by circulating a draft UN Security Council resolution on Tuesday that would link the future of a UN observer mission with demands that the government stop "provocative actions" over Abkhazia.
The Russian move raises the threat that the latest dispute could jeopardize the future of the peacekeeping mission, whose mandate expires on Oct. 15.
Washington for its part urged Moscow to end the punitive measures, echoing a similar call from the EU.
The images of a besuited Ferdinand Marcos Jr, clad in a top hat and leaning nonchalantly on a Rolls-Royce, dating from his time in Britain in the 1970s, are as you might expect from the playboy scion of a kleptocratic dictator. Yet as the Marcos family returns to power in the Philippines after a landslide presidential victory by Marcos Jr, he is facing calls to stop misrepresenting the circumstances of his studies at the University of Oxford. The university has confirmed that he did not complete his degree in philosophy, politics and economics after enrolling in 1975. “According to our records, he did
CALIBRATED RESPONSE: The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants to assess the situation and the risks, the transport minister said Singapore will strive to keep its borders open and stay connected to the rest of world even if a new variant of COVID-19 emerges, Singaporean Minister for Transport S. Iswaran said on Wednesday. The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants, Iswaran said in an interview with Bloomberg News. When the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 hit, Singapore did not backtrack on its reopening plans, but rather decided to wait and see how things panned out, he said, adding that the response was different versus the Delta outbreak. “We’ve all learned to adapt,” Iswaran said on the sidelines
Administrators at an elite Beijing university have backed down from plans to further tighten restrictions on students as part of China’s “zero COVID-19” strategy after a weekend protest at the school, students said on Tuesday. Graduate students at Peking University staged the protest on Sunday over the school’s decision to erect a sheet-metal wall to keep them further sequestered on campus, while allowing faculty to come and go freely. Discontent had already been simmering over regulations prohibiting them from ordering in food or having visitors, and daily COVID-19 testing. A citywide lockdown of Shanghai and expanded restrictions in Beijing in the past few
‘EATING UP SPRING’: Temperatures are 10oC to 15oC above the seasonal average and a city northwest of Madrid experienced its first ‘tropical’ May night on Friday Parts of Spain are experiencing their hottest May since records began, as a mass of hot, dry air blows in from Africa, bringing with it dusty skies and temperatures of more than 40°C. Spain’s state meteorological agency, Aemet, has warned of a weekend heat wave of an “extraordinary intensity,” with temperatures between 10°C and 15°C above the seasonal average and more akin to high summer than mid-May. “The early hours of 21 May have been extraordinarily hot for the time of year across a good part of the center and south of the peninsula,” Aemet said on Saturday. “In many places the
RSS