Russian Intends To Absorb South Ossetia

Forget about all the nonsense that Vlad Putin was spouting off about how Russia's invasion of Georgia was the fault of the US.

The proof is in the pudding. In this case, the facts are that the Russians have every intention of taking Georgian territory as their own. They were not seeking to support a South Ossetia independent of Russia. They want to absorb it as their own.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the region's leader, Eduard Kokoity, discussed the future of South Ossetia earlier this week in Moscow, South Ossetian parliamentary speaker Znaur Gassiyev said.

Russia will absorb South Ossetia "in several years" or earlier, a position was "firmly stated by both leaders," Mr. Gassiyev said.

In Moscow, a Kremlin spokeswoman said today there was "no official information" on the talks.

The vice speaker of Georgia's parliament, Gigi Tsereteli, said the statement cannot be taken seriously.

"The separatist regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the Russian authorities are cut off from reality," he said in Tbilisi. "The world has already become different and Russia will not long be able to occupy sovereign Georgian territory."

"The regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia should think about the fact that if they become part of Russia, they will be assimilated and in this way they will disappear," he added.

Russia used the separatists in South Ossetia and no longer need them. They did what they had to do - create a pretext to get Georgia to crack down on the separatists in order for the Russians to storm in claiming that they're protecting the South Ossetians from Georgian aggression.

This was Russia's take on Anschluss.

UPDATE:
Hot Air also weighs in, and Below the Beltway wonders whether Putin has joined the tin-foil hat brigade in blaming Bush for all that ails the world.