One year after Russia's recognition of the Independence of the Republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Caucasus begins to gain a new shape, enjoy more stability and make more sense, while Moscow is welcomed as a friend in its historic sphere of operations. Given the actions and reactions of other powers not so friendly to Moscow, it hardly comes as a surprise.

One year on, there is finally a climate of peace in the Caucasus. True, there continue to be a handful of agents provocateurs in Chechnya and there continue to be cells of criminals and bandits in Dagestan and Ingushetia, like everywhere else. However, the citizens of Abkhazia and South Ossetia today are more relaxed, feel safer, feel happier, feel at home with their new neighbours who wish to help them develop instead of exterminating them like Saakashvili's Georgians.   

The Defense Ministry is doubling the amount to be paid to Russian soldiers who fought in the 5-day war in Ossetia last August. In 2009, the budget funds allocated for these payments have doubled against the initial amount of 2.4 billion rubles, and will reach 4.7 billion rubles ($138 million), Mikhail Motorin, head of the Ministry's financial planning department, told Interfax news agency on Thursday.

The money will be paid as traveling expenses to the military staff who were in South Ossetia and Abkhazia during the conflict. According to Motorin, the funds are enough to fully cover the Defense Ministry's indebtedness to the August war participants.  

Integration in NATO will ensure Ukraine's territorial integrity and independence, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said in an interview to Ukrainian journalists. "I am deeply convinced that for integration in NATO for us, integration in the European collective security policy - is an essence behind which there are our territorial integrity and independence," he said.

The president stressed that decisions of the two recent summits of the alliance regarding prospects for Ukraine's membership in the organisation were confirmed at a meeting with the NATO secretary general. "The decisions of the Bucharest summit have been fully confirmed. They are the foundation in our relations and cooperation prospects," Yushchenko added.    

The ten UN judges at the International Court of Justice who supported the opinion that Kosovo's Declaration of Independence on February 17, 2008 does not violate general international law are, at best, incompetent charlatans; at worst, they are towing the line of the gray, malevolent forces which wish to create a Kosovo Mafia State in the Balkans. And after all, anyone can declare himself the King of Saturn and issue certificates selling its rings...

The "ruling" of the International Court of Justice on the status of Kosovo's independence holds as much influence over international law, creates as much jurisprudence, as the "opinion" of a first-year law student opining on some hypothetical case in an academic debate. Today's "ruling" is in fact no more than a non-binding statement after a "hearing" among 14 judges at the ICJ. A "hearing" whose results had to be postponed because of the severe degree of disagreement among those involved.

Today, on November 23, South Ossetia is holding special events to celebrate the 20th anniversary of starting a fight for independence. On this day, the republic is celebrating one of its main national holidays, St. George's Day.  As reported to Interfax by the president's State Counsellor Zhanna Zasseeva, an action called A Band of Feat is being held in South Ossetia on November 21-23: the citizens are given the bands with the Ossetian tricolored flag. Lessons of Feat are organized in all the schools and an exhibition of creative works dedicated to the heroic resistance is held in the Exhibition Hall in Tskhinval.