The Bug Pit
The announcement by the commander of Russia's air force that Russia has transported some of its S-300 air defense systems into Abkhazia has caused quite a stir in Georgia, and around the blogosphere. But is it news? A State Department spokesman says it isn't:
The UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office has released its annual Strategic Export Controls report (PDF), in which it reports on military exports over the last year.
All of a sudden, sophisticated Russian air defense systems are popping up all over the Caucasus. First it was (maybe) Azerbaijan, now it's Abkhazia. Via Civil.ge:
Armenia's defense minister, Seyran Ohanian, says that Armenia plans to buy "long-range, precision-guided weapons," though it hasn't specified of what sort and from whom. Reports RFE/RL:
On the two-year anniversary of the Russia-Georgia war, the Georgian newspaper Rezonans has published what it calls a complete list of Russian military installations in Abkhazia (via BBC Monitoring):
Psou - One platoon of Russian border-guards, 7 Abkhaz border-guards, one BMP, one BTR.
Gagra - One platoon of Russian border-guards armed with automatic weapons and have the use of machine guns.
Over the weekend, the Washington Post had an article on the "Osh Polygon" that the U.S. plans to build in Kyrgyzstan. For people who have been following the issue (in particular in EurasiaNet) it contained no new information. But it does break ground, as far as I can tell, in one way: its confident use of the b-word to describe the facility.
Central Asia already has the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Collective Security Treaty Organization -- does it need another collective security organization? Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad thinks so:
How big a military does South Ossetia need? RFE/RL's Caucasus Report blog flags an interview with the territory/country's new defense minister, Colonel Valery Yakhnovets (the fifth consecutive Russian army officer to hold that post, incidentally) in a Russian newspaper:
A week ago, a Russian newspaper reported that Russia was preparing to sell Azerbaijan two batteries of S-300 air defense systems. That report has yet to be confirmed, and it has been denied by all sorts of sources, but it has nonetheless resulted in a tidal wave of speculation in Yerevan and Baku.