Russia to continue CIS peacekeeping despite provocations
27/06/2006 15:00 MOSCOW, June 27 (RIA Novosti) - President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia would continue its peacekeeping missions in the former Soviet republics regardless of provocations.
"We will continue our peacekeeping mission despite open provocations we often encounter," Putin said.
Russia has led four post-Soviet peacekeeping missions, helping contain ethnic and other conflicts that broke out in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, Russia leads a collective security force of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a union of former Soviet republics, helping it curb radical Islamic groups' activities and deter new outbreaks of civil war.
Russia has also acted as a mediator in a conflict between Moldova and its breakaway region of Transdnestr. In the Caucasus, it has troops in the conflict zones in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which proclaimed their independence from Georgia in the early 1990s.
The mission in South Ossetia has been in the spotlight in the last few months following a series of incidents, including shootouts between Georgians and Ossetians and arrests by Georgian authorities of Russian military officers.
Some officials in Russia said the incidents were premeditated by Georgia's new Western-leaning government to provoke military action and invite international peacekeeping forces that would oust Russia from the region.
Georgia, for its part, has accused Russia of backing regimes in the breakaway regions and fueling separatist sentiments there.
The Georgian Parliament is expected to decide by mid-July whether or not to demand the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The move has been opposed by the self-proclaimed republics, which say Russia's withdrawal would leave them vulnerable to Georgian aggression.
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