FOR years, she has been one of ballet's global superstars, hailed by audiences from New York to Moscow. But the Georgian prima ballerina Nina Ananiashvili took a different role in Edinburgh yesterday, appealing for international forces to help calm the conflict in Georgia, defending her country's actions in South Ossetia and denouncing Russia's military action.
Ananiashvili, the lead dancer and artistic director of the State Ballet of Georgia, spoke hours before starring in Giselle, one of the highlights of the Edinburgh International Festival.
The show would go on, she said, even as bombs fell on the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and other areas where the dancers' families live. "We need to be on stage, we need to show our country, we need to dance for our country. We want to show who we are, what we do, and that art is something else we can talk about," she said.
After three days of fighting, Russia last night declared itself ready to make peace with Georgia, while United Nations officials confirmed Georgia was prepared to negotiate with Russia by withdrawing its troops from South Ossetia and creating a "safe travel" zone.
Ananiashvili's voice carries unusual weight for a dancer – her husband is Grigol Vashadze, Georgia's deputy foreign minister. They met and married when he was a junior Soviet diplomat.
For many years, she was the leading ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, one of Russia's greatest cultural icons. But when Georgia won independence after years of civil war, she answered a personal request from its president, Mikheil Saakashvili, to return and rebuild the country's own shattered ballet company.
Yesterday, the mother of two, who left Georgia to study in Russia at the age of 13, said "thousands" of shocked Russian colleagues and friends had called her. But she added: "The Russian people and Russian politicians are two different things."
Ananiashvili called Russia's actions "a great pity" and wrong. In a news conference at the Edinburgh Playhouse, she was, in turn, sad and angry, sometimes breaking from heavily accented English into her native language to put her points across.
Georgia had intervened in the province of Ossetia to try to control the black-market trade, and the conflict had begun when Ossetians killed two Georgian military personnel, she said, adding: "It started like this."
Calling for international help on the ground, she said: "If we want to have a stable situation there, why just Russians? Let's bring somebody else from Ukraine, or Europe, to stay there and control the situation.
"If we are wrong, have somebody else there to exit Russians and control the situation."
Becoming angry, she went on: "You cannot call it the stupid Georgians doing something, because it's our territory. We don't do one step out. It's inside our territory."
Ananiashvili said she had been able to talk by telephone to her husband and family. "We need to be there," she said. "The situation feels like Russia wants again to occupy our territory. Everybody in the world says this is Georgian territory and they just want to control of it.
We are ready to do anything to finish this one. We want to just control our small territory that we have."
The 80 members of the ballet company had been due to fly home today, but British Airways flights to Georgia have been cancelled.
Georgians watch a building hit by bombardments in Gori. Picture: AFP/Getty Images
Georgia 'pulls out forces' as Russian Bear's grip tightens
Lindsay McIntosh
GEORGIA claimed it had withdrawn its troops from the sudden bloody conflict with Russia last night, ahead of talks to avoid an even more serious escalation of conflict in the region.
The former Soviet state said it told the Russian ambassador it had ceased fire in the separatist region of South Ossetia, withdrawn its forces, and was ready for immediate negotiations on a "termination of hostilities".
UN officials backed Tbilisi's claims but Moscow said the conflict – which began in earnest on Friday and has reportedly claimed the lives of 2,000 civilians – was continuing apace.
Although the Kremlin said it was "ready to end the war", Georgia's interior ministry said that just hours after its ceasefire announcement, Russia bombed targets on the outskirts of the capital, Tbilisi. Russia also said its warships had sunk a Georgian boat that approached and tried to attack.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy is to visit Moscow this week as part of efforts to end the conflict.
Meanwhile, Sergei Bagapsh, the self-styled president of the other separatist Georgian province, Abkhazia, sent 1,000 troops to a disputed gorge, effectively opening a second front in Georgia's battle to regain control over its breakaway regions.
Last night, the country began to pull its 2,000 troops back from Iraq, assisted by an American airlift, in an effort to shore up its defences – or reinforce its offensive. Consternation at the violence was voiced internationally throughout yesterday. The Foreign Office advised British citizens to leave the region if possible.
Earlier, clashes in South Ossetia were reported to be less intense, as Russian forces seized power and Georgian troops drew back.
Russian television showed what it said were pictures from South Ossetia's capital Tskhinvali, of burnt-out buildings, wounded civilians receiving medical treatment in basements and crying mothers complaining of a lack of food and water.
"The Georgian tanks fired at everything they saw, including women and children," one man said after his evacuation over the border to the Russian region of North Ossetia.
Pictures on NTV television showed Tskhinvali's main hospital in ruins and most of the more than 230 patients crammed into the basement. Patients, many of them wincing, were receiving treatment on tabletops from clearly harried doctors.
In the evening, the Georgian foreign ministry said in a statement that the country "today stopped firing in the South Ossetian conflict zone and is ready to begin talks with Russia on a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities". It said a note had been passed to the Russian embassy in Georgia to that effect.
But Russian peacekeepers said Georgian forces were still there.
"Peacekeepers' posts monitor the presence of Georgian forces, artillery and armour," Vladimir Ivanov, an aide to the Russian military commander said. "Georgia has not withdrawn forces from South Ossetia."
Russia currently has no international mandate to deploy soldiers in South Ossetia, but refers to them as peacekeepers.
Earlier, as Moscow directed two warships out of their leased Ukrainian base at Sevastopol to blockade the Georgian port of Poti, the former Soviet state said it reserved the right to prevent them returning.
International figures were quick to raise their concerns, as the UN Security Council began talks for the fourth time in four days to try to resolve the situation, ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Wednesday in Brussels.
Russia, which called the first meeting on Thursday night hours before its tanks rumbled into Georgia, will only act in "self-defence" said Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin last night
"Let's state clearly that we are ready to put an end to the war, that we will withdraw from South Ossetia, that we will sign an agreement on non-use of force," he said.
The West is vying for influence with Russia over oil and gas supply routes in the region and Russia is rankled by Georgia's pro-Western policies and its drive for Nato membership.
Angus Robertson, the Westminster SNP leader who established parliament's All Party South Caucasus Group, said the regional conflict must become a top government priority but "sadly there have been recent Foreign Office cuts to vital peace and reconciliation efforts in the region".
Nato's Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said Russia has violated Georgia's territorial integrity in South Ossetia and used excessive force. Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, who is travelling to Georgia with his Finnish counterpart for mediation talks, called the hostilities "massacres" and "medieval" and also said he would press for an immediate end to the violence.
The United States, Georgia's main ally, also condemned Moscow's military action and warned that any further escalation could have a "significant long-term impact" on relations.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said: "It is essential that humanitarian agencies be able to reach the affected and the displaced, and that those trapped in conflict areas be granted passage to safer areas as soon as possible."
ANALYSIS: Russia's weapons will no longer be military hardware, but oil and gas
THE POUNDING of Georgia by Russian planes and tanks is giving credibility to claims that a New Cold War is upon us, but the danger the West may face from a resurgent Russia is very different to that posed by the former Soviet Union.
On paper, Russia has a one million-strong army with more than 25 combat divisions, but this force is a shadow of the once mighty Red Army, manned by poorly trained conscripts with outdated equipment.
Russia's defence budget is less than Britain's and one-twentieth of America's, leaving it ill-suited to taking on the West in conventional war.
Its nuclear weapons, though plentiful, have limited capabilities, with only a handful ready to use.
Meanwhile the Russian press is full of stories of unpaid conscripts forced to tend vegetable gardens simply to survive. Desertion is rife and morale is further eroded by rich Russian families paying to keep their own sons out of service.
Political upheavals over the past two decades have also seen most Russian military hardware fall a generation behind that of the West. The 24 Sukhoi jets recently told to Venezuela would be shot out of the sky were they to come up against the US Air Force.
But Russia has other weapons at its disposal in any confrontation with the West, beginning with its vast reserves of oil and gas. It has already demonstrated its willingness to use gas as a weapon when it cut supplies to Ukraine, a fact of life that has dissuaded European leaders from making more than token protests about the fighting in Georgia.
Meanwhile Russia has offered to sell air defence missiles, one area in which it retains expertise, to Iran, a huge complication should Tehran begin a nuclear weapons programme and Israel or the United States contemplate military action.
The full article contains 1704 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
