news- weekend post-soviet edition
My day trip to a country that doesn’t exist
You won’t find Transdniestr on a European map because officially it doesn’t exist. In reality, however, it does, and here in Chisneau a babushka was selling bus tickets to where I wanted to go.
“Tirsapol! Bender!” she called out, naming Transdniestr’s two biggest cities.
It was a promising start but when I asked for a ticket to Tiraspol the babushka demanded my passport, flicked through its pages and handed it back. “No ticket,” she said, shaking her head. “You need invitation.”
Russian troops withdraw in western Georgia
Second Georgian policeman killed in Abkhazia
Tbilisi claims ethnic cleansing of Georgians
Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria said the incident occurred late Friday after Ossetian paramilitaries set fire to ethnic Georgian homes in two South Ossetian villages, Koshka and Disevi.
“Then they poured kerosene on several residents of the villages and told them to leave,” Bokeria told the Associated Press.
He said that in the next two or three months dicussions would begin on Kosovo at the European Commission (EC), stressing that the province was part of this process, even though it had still not signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA).
Oil flow resumes at BTC pipeline after technical failure in Turkey
OK, more cheerful stuff tomorrow. Unless I have too much fun tonight, in which case, you should be cheerful for me.
