South Ossetia: Russophone Blog Roundup

Blogging from Poti, a Georgian port city whose “oil terminal, port facilities and a nearby railroad junction” were attacked by Russian fighter jets shortly after midnight Saturday, 27-year-old LJ user pepsikolka, an ethnic Russian citizen of Georgia, posted these hurried reports (RUS) on Aug. 8 and 9:

Aug. 8, 2008 - 1:23 PM

My colleagues have been drafted, some of them early in the morning, I’m shocked, can’t understand what’s going on and where to look for the truth - Georgian channels say one thing, Russian say something else, what’s going to happen???

***

Aug. 9, 2008 - 12:50 AM:

The port has been bombed, we’re sitting in the street, scared, they say some people have been wounded. Pray for us.

[…]

alchutoff:

[…] That’s ours [Russians] who are bombing you, right?

pepsikolka:

Oh God. I don’t know, but that’s what they are saying.

***

[…]

Oleg Panfilov - LJ user oleg_panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations - happened to be spending his vacation in Georgia. He posted this comment (RUS) about air strikes on the Georgian town of Gori, carried out by the Russian forces on Saturday morning:

A few hours after I had passed Gori, the “peacekeepers’ fighter jets” hit the town. One plane was downed - one pilot died, the other was arrested and is being interrogated.

It’s hard to understand what they are trying to achieve by hitting [outside of] South Ossetia, but it looks like Russia is becoming more and more like the Soviet Union…

If someone in the Kremlin hopes that this will split Georgia and the Georgian society, they are deeply mistaken - all the opposition leaders announced their support for [Mikheil Saakashvili]. Even [Irakli Okruashvili], the [dismissed former] minister of defense, said he was ready to go to South Ossetia as an ordinary soldier.

[…]

There is no panic in Tbilisi, but many friends are calling me, incredulous - they [knew Russia was capable of a lot], but [to act like this]… […]

The full post by Veronica Khokhlova is available on Global Voices Online.