I am 99.99% sure this hasn't appeared in the Anglophone media, so I thought I'd let you guys know... Due to Georgia's seizure of Svan land adjacent to Abkhazia and sabre-rattling at the latter, Nikolai Kozytsin, the leader of the Don Cossacks, has promised to send 10,000-15,000 men to assist the Abkhaz in case of attack. (That latter figure would be three times the size of Abkhazia's standing army.) In addition, Grozny is talking about sending two divisions of former "freedom fighters" to fight the Georgians. That's 10,000-15,000 badass Cossacks and maybe a thousand super-badass battle-hardened Chechen guerrilla fighters. I assume that fighters from other Cossack Hosts are en route as well or will be shortly, as are armed men from Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Ossetia and just about everywhere else in the North Caucasus, killing Georgians being the one thing Cossacks, Chechens and everybody else in the North Caucasus can all get behind.
I'm hoping that sane heads will prevail in Georgia, but if things heat up, don't be surprised.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com