(South Ossetia)Rusuldana Doguzova, 75, stands crying in the second floor entrance of her brick house. Above her, the sun shines through a latticework of broken boards that was once the roof and onto a dust-covered china closet. During last month's battle for control of Tskhinvali, capital of the breakaway Georgian Republic of South Ossetia, a rocket crashed into the house Doguzova shares with her sister, spraying lines of shrapnel down the living room wall. A second rocket blew up in the garden, gouging the earth and knocking down trees. Beyond the garden fence, a concrete apartment building was burnt out after the fighting. "If the Russians hadn't come, we would have been wiped out," she says.
Tensions between South Ossetia, which Moscow now recognizes as independent, and Georgia, which says the enclave is still part of its sovereign territory, remain high. To show its solidarity with South Ossetia, and to create facts on the ground that will be hard to change, Moscow is quickly pouring money into patching up Tskhinvali. Close to the center of the capital, dark green army trucks grind up and down the grid of streets carrying construction supplies. "Volunteer" youth brigades from Russia and men in the orange beret of the Ministry of Disaster Services are busy cleaning sites.
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My Comment: I was originally skeptical that Russian aid would come in quickly to rebuild South Ossetia. I was wrong. Russia is laying the groundwork for a long stay in this breakaway province, and the people of South Ossetia appear to want them to stay.
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