While it is still not clear whether it was Georgia that escalated the conflict first, or Russia through its local puppets and mercenaries who provoked Tbilisi, the basic fact remains that the fighting is taking place exclusively within the internationally recognized borders of Georgia. Despite the Western media’s persistent description of the Russian military in South Ossetia as “peacekeepers,” they are and have always been nothing but an occupation and invading force.
In fact, Russia has used the same method for years elsewhere. In Transnistria, a secessionist area of Moldova, Russian “peacekeepers” have kept the local gang of unreconstructed Stalinist smugglers since the early 1990s, and in Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian territory, it is the same “peacekeepers” and mercenaries who have ethnically cleansed the Georgian majority and de facto annexed the area.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=39A9CA87-450A-4A5F-93E9-6099A822EC48