• Listen to this segment

More than ten thousand protesters marched against Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, blaming him for the recent brief war with Russia. The protesters support the conservative opposition that are demanding parliamentary and presidential elections in early 2009, and accuse the government of election fraud. While Saakashvili had insisted that Georgia acted in self-defense during the 5 day war over the break-away region of South Ossetia, a recent New York Times article claimed otherwise. The Times quotes military observers who said that inexperienced Georgian forces unleashed indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire at South Ossetian in August, in a move supported by the US.

Ronald Grigor Suny is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, and a current Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Michigan, author of “The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States” and “The Making of the Georgian Nation.”