What Is This World Coming To?

Thousands of troops, backed by hundreds of tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry, began rumbling through the North Caucasus on Monday, as Russia began its largest military exercises since last year’s war with Georgia.

The Caucasus 2009 war games are being seen by many experts as a warning shot for nearby Georgia, where the government says it has rearmed armed forces and where NATO recently wrapped up its own exercises.

Experts say the exercises may also be signal to the United States that Russia will give no ground on its efforts to maintain an exclusive sphere of influence in Georgia and other former Soviet republics. The games run through July 6 — the day that President Barack Obama arrives in Moscow for a highly anticipated summit with Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev.

Defense Ministry officials say more than 8,500 troops will take part, along with nearly 200 tanks, armored vehicles, 100 artillery units and several units from Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet.

Only hours after Russia agreed to a cease-fire brokered by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian forces pushed deep into Georgia, capturing the strategic town of Gori, less than an hour from the Georgian capital at Tblisi.

Thick black plumes of smoke rose from Gori as panicked residents — including the doctors and patients of the local hospital — fled to Tbilisi in packed cars and minivans. Most locals had already abandoned Gori after it was heavily bombarded by Russian forces on Tuesday, just before Presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia and Nicholas Sarkozy of France announced a provisional cease-fire.

With Russian tanks securing Gori, Ossetian militias and Russian cossacks began pillaging stores and homes, fleeing residents and Western eyewitnesses said. Some Georgians attempting to escape said they were told by irregulars to abandon their cars and valuables at gunpoint, and forced to walk toward Tbilisi. At least one vehicle of Western journalists was also seized at gunpoint by Russian-allied irregulars.

The EU and US are in discussions over the best way to ‘punish’ Russia for its invasion of Georgia.

For now, the US has decided to ditch an important NATO naval exercise with Russia that was due to begin on Friday. The annual exercise usually includes Britain, France, Russia and the US.

But the odds-on favorite solution being to kick the Russians out of the G-7 plus Russia. (That would make it the G-7 without Russia. That will teach those crazy Ivans!)

The G-7 plus Russia didn’t fit, anyway. The Bible speaks of the existence in the last days of two different governing authorities, which the Prophet Daniel and the Apostle John each represent as a beast with seven heads and ten horns. The seven heads represent economic authority, the ten horns represent political power.

The EU has absorbed as many as 27 nations, but there remain just ten FULL members of the European Union, which is as close to a revived form of the Roman Empire as has existed since the Fall of Rome to the Goths and Vandals in the 5th century.

The G-7 consists of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.

Russia continues its push well beyond the borders of South Ossetia and into Georgia itself. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says that all Russia is trying to do is bring its ‘peacekeeping mission to its logical conclusion.” Whether that logical conclusion includes the existence of an independent state called Georgia remains to be seen.

Noted one blogger, Georgia certainly identifies with — and considered itself an ally of — the West. After fighting broke out, Georgian state television even switched from the national news to the anti-Russian, Cold War classic flick “Red Dawn.” So it’s understandable that the people there are begging for Western help — they’re even looking for Israel to pressure Russia. But despite strong words from U.S. bigwigs, it’s become increasingly clear that nobody is coming to Georgia’s aid. “Georgians are wondering, where is NATO? NATO isn’t coming. Deal with it. Saakashvilli staked his presidency on it and failed.”