Today people in Russia often joke of the old Soviet times when we had 4 TV channels to watch and basically only one point of view to perceive. What makes a country’s media free is the chance to get different opinions. Who would have thought that I as a Russian incidentally spending her summer in Houston, Texas would face an absolutely “biased media” case in the States? With news highlighting the recent events in South Ossetia as no less than “the Russian invasion of Georgia” my stay here has become a bit of a challenge. Imagine facing harsh expressions and strong condemns towards your country and be left with no place at all for a different point of view. This is why I would like to use this opportunity to share my vision of the events.

On August 6^th the Georgian forces wiped out Tshinvali, the capitol of South Ossetia. That’s all there is to it. What’s left are ruins, Russian peacekeepers killed and more than 2 thousand innocent lives lost. Hearing this I went straightly to the CNN web page and what did I see on the World news? – NOTHING. Not a hint of the unacceptable aggression put forward by Mr.Saakashvili. Russia didn’t have any right not to respond to such a ruthless action, most of the people of South Ossetia are Russian citizens, our peacekeepers were targeted by their own Georgian “colleagues”. The next day sure everyone is talking about the conflict and in some magical way the aggressor turns into a victim. A young democracy is being strangled by the brutal Russian bear. You hear comments like “..well so much for Olympic truce” addressed to the Russian sportsmen on the opening night in Beijing. On the front page of USA today, New York Times we see photos of victims in Gori, but not a single picture of the devastation in Tshinvali.

Saakashvili’s #1 goal was to please the West and humiliate Russia. In order to get his 15 minutes of fame the Georgian President didn’t hesitate to kill thousands of people, his own people come to think of it. Is this how a truly democratic leader should behave??? And now news reporters say Russia is evil and we want to go back to the Cold War. Honestly, how can they think otherwise? They’ve got Saakashvili going on everywhere live as guest of shows and speaking English (I now doubt if the man actually knows Georgian). At this point I actually started to think about means of self defense and picture angry people picketing our Consulate with Go home RUSSIA! posters or even eggs and tomatoes in their pockets when my depressive mood suddenly changed for the better. Working at the Consulate I started receiving letters and phone calls of support from Americans with headlines like “Russia is right!” and words like “Hang in there!” I now feel a great respect for Americans who despite the dominating news coverage mainstream perfectly realize the motives of Georgia’s actions and the importance of US-Russian relations which are not to be put at stake because of someone’s personal ambitions. “I am not Russian, yet all this is obvious to me”, - one of the supporters writes.

Honestly Russia doesn’t want to overthrow Saakashvili’s regime and conquer an independent democracy. From my scarce experience I think that invasions do tend to happen in the 21^st century (though according to Senator McCain it is strongly uncivilized) but Russia still has a load of domestic problems to solve. C’mon guys, we’re not the world’s #1 economy to invade other countries! Russia doesn’t need another war, we only wish to have good normal relations with the country who happens to be our neighbor, but is doing everything to make these relations worse.