Explosions in the western Georgian city of Zugdidi overnight have halted trains on the Zugdidi-Tbilisi railway, RFE/RL's Georgian Service reports. Three explosions occurred early on June 11 at the local railway station and near a police department over a three-hour period. One person was reportedly injured.
But I wouldn't be surprised.
Yet Russia may want to reconsider another adventure in Georgia, with violence in the region challenging Russia's local allies:
The North Caucasus region, located between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, consists of a cluster of semiautonomous republics, many of them Islamic, arranged around the Caucasus Mountains. It's one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the world, with over 40 distinct ethnic groups. Much of the violence is carried out by Muslim militants who have declared war on police and state officials, calling them anti-Islamic for their allegiance to Russia. Other clashes are interethnic, with a century of conflict behind them. Based on the escalating levels of violence over the past 20 years, including two wars in Chechnya, an ethnic conflict between Ingushetia and North Ossetia, and a war in Dagestan, observers say the most dangerous republics in the region are Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and North Ossetia.
The Georgians need to make their country too hard to conquer quickly or cheaply, so that the Russians don't think that unrest in the rest of the region requires a nice victim to cow the restless imperial subjects in the North Caucasus.
