Russia officially recognizes independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Frankly, I’m a little surprised it took them this long. They threatened to take this step if the U.S. recognized Kosovo’s independence, which we did, and then Georgia attacked South Ossetia giving them an adequate pretext, and then Russia launched a counter-invasion and did a bunch of stuff that I would have considered going beyond the recognition step.
Note that as of a couple of weeks ago, Charles Krauthammer and Robert Kagan and such would have had us believe that short of strident anti-Russian measures by the United States, Russian tanks were about to pour into Kiev, Warsaw, and Helsinki. In practice, the Bush administration’s done nothing meaningful to stop the Russians from having their way with Georgia but the consequences for the wider world have been less than dramatic and everyone’s now more interested in the pseudo-event in Denver.
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