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Georgia and Beyond: Russia's response to separatism and ethnic conflict

The war between Russia and Georgia caught most of the world by surprise but it is a conflict that has long been brewing – and one that is part of a larger drama. The bigger context is Russia’s attempt to regain the influence it enjoyed during the years of the Cold War, and the hurdles that stand in the way of projecting its identity as a unified, sovereign nation.

Jason Maloney, Zygmunt Dzieciolowski and Kira Kay report from Georgia, from its breakaway regions and from Russia itself.

Russia’s approach to the Georgia crisis is a reprise of its wars in the north Caucasus region of Chechnya, with the twist that this time Russian tanks are rumbling across international borders to stake out positions in a supposedly sovereign neighbor. To most Russians the situations are parallel: This is a security situation; it will be fought through use of force, and separatist tendencies will be brutally crushed. The rebuilt Chechnyan capital of Grozny is showcased as proof that the iron fist works.

But elsewhere in this vast nation there are more nuanced, untold stories of both challenges and successes of Russia’s management of separatism, demands for autonomy, or simply protection from discrimination and attack for its minority populations. The Pulitzer team of journalists will examine those challenges and successes, against the backdrop of war in Georgia.

See reated reporting from Executive Director Jon Sawyer's Caucusus in Context (Summer 06)

This reporting project is part of Rising Powers: The New Global Reality, a project sponsored by the Stanley Foundation. It is designed to raise awareness, motivate new thinking, and ultimately improve US foreign policy regarding the global transformation taking place, as a new group of countries exhibit a growing influence over the future of the world.

Also see Pulitzer Center/Stanley Foundation Rising Powers reporting projects India: Conflicts Within, and A Turkish Dilemma.

Jason Maloney

Jason Maloney is a co-founder, producer, videographer and editor with the Bureau for International Reporting (BIR) – a non-profit organization dedicated to producing and providing vital international television news programming to an American audience.  With the BIR, Maloney has reported from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Russia, Georgia, India, Uganda and Cambodia ...

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Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

Zygmunt Dzieciolowski is a Polish-born journalist, writer and documentary film director. For the last twenty years Zygmunt's main interest has been Russia and other post soviet republics. He took up journalism in 1987, rather late in his career, when communism was about to collapse and censorship and strict party control weakened. ...

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Kira Kay

Kira Kay is Executive Director of the Bureau for International Reporting (BIR) – a non-profit organization dedicated to producing and providing vital international television news programming to an American audience. She was the recipient of the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award in International Journalism ... Click on name above for full bio.