Question by Ernesto: What is it that Russia is seeking in Georgia’s provinces?
Russia has now made “frindship treaties” with two of Georgia’s provinces and is treating them as seperate countries. There has to be something inside those provinces that Russia wants. Minierals, gold, oil, What? Does anyone know something concrete besides guessing?
Answers and Views:
Answer by freedomisbetter
Abkassia province has oil… All Georgia is a strategic place to transport oil, army etc.
Georgia russians are just 6% of the population but Russia wants more than 20% of Georgian land…
What do you think? Answer below!
Alexander says
There is really nothing in those provinces themselves that Russia may need. Certainly no oil in Abkhazia.
Strategic goals of Russia might be following:
– Undermine Georgian independence, stir instability in that country and at best annex it altogether, while at least stop Georgians' drifting towards free democracies and held the territory as Russian "sphere of influence" the same way it oppressed Eastern Europe for decades after the World War II. That is what I think US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described as "the paranoid, aggressive impulse,”
https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=/200…
It is actually correct statement. The sentiments in Russia are similar to what one could find in Nazi Germany before the World War II.
On more rational level there could be another explanation:
– Georgia is the only alternative to Russia when exporting oil and gas from Central-Asian countries to the West. Russia gets huge profits on oil and gaz transit from Central Asia to Europe, comparable to the profits it receives from exporting its own ressources. The oil and gaz exports make as much 70% of cash inflow into Russia. And Russia is second world's oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. Even more important, most of Russia's own oil wells are old with production declining. According to some estimates Russia needs to invest as much as $ 6 billion dollars every year in order just to retain the oil production at 2007 levels. Monopolizing Central Asian transit could be an attractive goal. Kazakhstan is believed to have as much as 50% of oil reserves that are supposed to be in Russia itself and what is even more important, most of those reservs are new, not yet depleted and of a higher value.
Whether those goals have been or will be achieved by Russia is a different story however. As much as they may seem attractive to Russia they would pose imminent threat to the European countries, especially from former Soviet Union, East and North Europe. They are also in direct conflict with the strategic interests of the US in the region.
So the challenge of the West would be not to let Russia achieve its goals without direct military ingagement.