Report From Tbilisi, Georgia

Georgians gather waiting for a humanitarian aid to be distributed in Gori, northwest of the capital Tbilisi, Georgia, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008. Some 80,000 refugees are in more than 600 centers in and around Tbilisi, primarily sheltered in schools, hospitals and previously abandoned buildings. (AP Photo /Sergei Grits)

From City Journal:

Fleeing Russian brutality, Georgians look to the West for support.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia has unleashed a refugee crisis all over the country and especially in its capital. Every school here in Tbilisi is jammed with civilians who fled aerial bombardment and shootings by the Russian military—or massacres, looting, and arson by irregular Cossack paramilitary units swarming across the border. Russia has seized and effectively annexed two breakaway Georgian provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It has also invaded the region of Gori, which unlike them had been under Georgia’s control. Gori is in the center of the country, just an hour’s drive from Tbilisi; 90 percent of its citizens have fled, and the tiny remainder live amid a violent mayhem overseen by Russian occupation forces that, despite Moscow’s claims to the contrary, are not yet withdrawing.

Read more ....

My Comment: For each day that Georgia's refugee crisis continues .... the stronger that anti-Russian feeling will grow in the former satellite countries and republics of the Soviet Union. All of these former states do not want to experience the same thing that Georgia is going through at this moment.

The Russians will have to expect a lot of blow-back from these events. They will probably blame the U.S. and Europe for everything .... but after a while (how long I do not know) most of the people in Russia will know where the blame should fall .... and it is in the Kremlin.