Дневники

Мой репортаж из Цхинвала опубликовали в пражском журнале TOL (Transitions Online).

Residents of the war zone emerge from their hiding places and start to rebuild.

[Nearly two weeks after fighting broke out between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia, journalist Liza Valieva traveled from her home in the Russian republic of North Ossetia into South Ossetia. She, her husband, and a friend were taking food and other supplies to relatives in the disputed region. They met people thankful to be alive and thankful to Russia for its intervention. Locals’ hatred for the government in Tbilisi was mingled with a desire for revenge but an acknowledgement that some Georgians in South Ossetia are also suffering. With Russian forces seeming to have settled in in areas of Georgia outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and with the Kremlin’s recognition of the two breakaway regions’ independence, the current state of affairs has already taken on a sense of permanence here. — TOL]

A week after the last thunders of war died out, every kilometer of the road south from Vladikavkaz, in Russia, to Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, showed signs of the recent conflict. Our bus passed military camps, tanks, and armored vehicles parked by the roadside.
Some 200 meters north of the Roki tunnel, which cuts through the mountains and connects Russia to South Ossetia, a stream of tanks rumbled past, kicking up plumes of dust. Soldiers pulled us over and asked us to wait for the air to clear. We sat for half an hour while a line of cars formed behind us.
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