2008 年 8 月1日晚 格鲁吉亚与南奥塞梯发生交火事件，双方都把责任推给对方。最近几天，俄罗斯和格鲁吉亚发生激战，尸横遍野，可能引发全面战争。美国国务卿赖斯已出面了。在北京的格鲁吉亚的运动员已宣布可能退出奥运会。南奥的事情引起了全世界的关注。
南奥塞梯是格鲁吉亚的一个自治州，与俄罗斯北奥塞梯接壤。位于格鲁吉亚北部，面积约 3900 平方公里。南奥塞梯面积约 3900 平方公里，与俄罗斯北奥塞梯接壤，人口约 19 万，主要是南奥塞梯人、俄罗斯人和格鲁吉亚人。
南奥塞梯在苏联解体后宣布独立，并一直与格鲁吉亚中央政府处于对抗状态，但是与俄罗斯保持密切关系。格鲁吉亚与俄罗斯在南奥塞梯问题上一直龃龉不断。
俄罗斯一直支持南奥塞梯寻求脱离格鲁吉亚的努力，俄、格两国的关系也因此恶化。美国一直表示支持支持格鲁吉亚的领土完整，在最新的冲突爆发后马上呼吁双方立即停止敌对行动。美国、欧盟以及欧洲安全与合作组织都已经派出特使前往格鲁吉亚调停。
欧洲安全理事会警告，南奥塞梯的局势可能演变成一场全面的战争，给整个地区带来毁灭性的影响。
格鲁吉亚和南奥塞梯的冲突升级，南奥塞梯政府 8 月 2 日起疏散逾千名儿童及妇女，到邻近俄罗斯的北奥塞梯地区。俄罗斯外交部估计当地爆发全面战争的可能性越来越高。
当然，西方媒体对俄罗斯在这个问题上是持一边倒的批评态度。
我的朋友转来一封他的俄罗斯朋友写的个人意见。我转发在这儿，帮助人们看到不同的意见。以保证比较全面、客观、平衡地来看待格鲁吉亚和南奥的冲突问题。
来信摘要如下：
I feel responsible to clarify the situation in Georgia, since I watched CNN and BBC and realized that they cover this story from the Georgian side only.
South Ossetia is a small country formed in 1992 separated from the Georgian territory. It is not populated by the Georgians, but by South Ossetians who are different in origin. In many ways it is fully similar to Kosovo.
Most of the population of the country has Russian citizenship as well South Ossetian citizenship. In 2006 99% votes in the popular referendum of South Ossetia voted for joining Russia.
Georgia opposed those initiatives and began military actions since 1992. Two days ago Georgian troops, without declaring war, began massive shelling and bombardment of South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali, which lasted for 14 hours and left civilian thousands fleeing their country across to the Russian border, 1,400 died and the capital city was destroyed (for some reason, this piece gets very little coverage in western news).
Russia required the Security Council of the UN to take action, but it has not acted. In order to protect Russia's citizens and Russia's own peacekeeping troops in Tskhinvali, we sent our tanks to restore peace - which, in turn got massive negative coverage on all international press and had Mr. Saakashvili, Georgia's president shamefully claim that Russia declared war on Georgia and it's "the worst nightmare he can imagine for his young democracy" and beg for the US to come save him.
I wouldn't imagine US not sending troops to a country where US citizens consist a vast majority of population that gets shelled in the middle of the night for no other reason than one shameless politician's ambitions to get Western support.
So guys, that's how it looks from this side of the world - and that's not Iraq, where no US people were dying and no arms of mass destructions were ever found, that's across the river and our citizens mostly - it is up to you to make up your mind what you believe or not, and let us all hope that does not evolves into a massive armed conflicts with more casualties.
