Russian position revealed

I think this article by Russia Today clearly points to the Russian position. If one understands that it is in Russia's interest to have an instable Caucasus region, and hence less investment from the West, oil and gas competition, and NATO membership Action Plan, one can clearly see Medvedev's position in these comments to Chancellor Merkel (Germany).

The "interests" that Russian forces are actually defending are small contingents of ex-KGB men who lead the extremely pro-Russian defacto separatist governments in both of these regions. 100 years ago, only 5% of the Tskhinvali population was Ossetian (the capital of South Ossetia, recently the battleground between Ossetian separatists, Georgian military, and Russian military). Before that, Tskhinvali was called Inner Kartli... for perhaps 2000 years or more.

I admit I don't know the exact history (I will find this), but the relatively recent existence of this "ethnic enclave" speaks not to an "ethnic conflict" here, but a hold over from Communist era divide and conquer policies. Again, I'm no political scientist, but as I understand it, this policy supported the growth of local national identities with little regard for the historical roots of a region, and championed the cultural causes of small groups of people as cogs in the wheel of a massive populist state structure.

But since groups of people were continually displaced and moved onto other people's land, this was a false nationalism and sparked resentment from people who had historically lived and died defending the very areas promised to these displaced groups. In the end, no one believed in the populist structure, and instead many of these small groups of people learned to hate each other where before a peaceful coexistence had been possible... these policies have continued to destabilize this and many regions of the former USSR and is the real core of this conflict.

Here is a link to the Medvedev comments in an article from the almost comically biased Russia Today website (there has been a lot of biased reporting... the alarmist CNN being largely pro-Georgian).