The debate still rages over which side came out of the August 7-12, 2008 war better.

It’s true that Russia crushed Georgia’s army when it stepped in to help South Ossetian rebels but its forceful reaction to the Georgian attempt to retake rebel held areas scared its European partners and isolated the country. Only Nicaragua followed Moscow and recognised both South Ossetia and another breakaway region Abkhazia as independent states after the war.

And despite an overwhelming military victory, the war also showed up technological and organisational deficiencies in Russia’s army.

For Georgia, the unsuccessful war dented its reputation as a reliable and steady ally for the West in the notoriously unstable South Caucasus. It also slowed President Mikheil Saakashvili’s NATO ambitions and undermined his popularity at home.

Both countries present starkly different versions of the war and who started it. A commission headed by a Swiss diplomat hopes to provide some answers later this year.

In the meantime the peace remains fragile, an estimated 30,000 displaced Georgians still live in temporary accommodation and relatives of those killed — Georgians, South Ossetians and Russians — will mark the anniversary.

Click for more stories on the Georgia-Russia 2008 war from Reuters AlertNet.

Reuters News correspondent Matt Robinson filed this post from Tbilisi:

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is back. In a marathon Q&A session on Georgian television on Friday he said he himself was in great shape, but that the parliament speaker’s heart had recently stopped beating after suffering an allergic reaction to medication.

“As a result his heart stopped, he was in collapse,” Saakashvili said, tanned and relaxed. “But then they managed to save him.” He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and read out text messages from his poorly colleague.

As for the prime minister, he’s working too hard. “I was calling him at 3 a.m. and he was in the office. I come to work at 11, sometimes 11.15. He’s in the office from 8 a.m. I told him he won’t last like that.”

Saakashvili’s relaxed banter dominated the 4-hour show, leaving the impression of a man firmly in control of his government, if not perhaps his train of thought.

The format was familiar. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has made a tradition of his annual televised phone-in with Russians, but their styles could hardly be more different. Think more Venezuela’s fast-talking Hugo Chavez.

“I’m not planning to die, nor to step down,” 41-year-old Saakashvili said.

There was a period recently when it looked as though Saakashvili had dug his own political grave, having attacked breakaway South Ossetia  in August last year and, according to his critics and even some of his allies, effectively walked into war with neighbouring Russia.

He was on the back foot, defending his fateful decision of Aug. 7 and facing renewed criticism of his record on democracy and freedom of speech since coming to power on the back of the 2003 “Rose Revolution”.

His late-night briefings and eccentric behaviour — he chewed his tie on camera before a television interview — became legendary. His appetite and energy are famous.

But the opposition looks divided.  An opposition rally called for Sunday, Jan 25 was cancelled as leaders bickered over their aims. Saakashvili has quipped that he would have toppled the Georgian government within five months had he been in opposition during such a devastating period. Observers who counted him out
would do well to think again.

“One day (Grigol) Mgaloblishvili won’t be prime minister, and one day Saakashvili won’t be president, but I’m telling you that as long as I’m in such good shape, no serious collapse threatens our government,” he said on Friday.

A mixture of pre-recorded and live studio questions were dominated by social issues, concerns about the economy and the plight of Georgian villagers displaced by the fighting.

But there was little scrutiny of Saakashvili’s decision to attack South Ossetia. Many Georgians appear to have accepted his argument that his hand was forced, that the separatists had stepped up shelling of Georgian villages and Russia was sending in armour to help them.

The question of whether the president was to blame rarely reaches Georgian homes. On Friday, Saakashvili steered the debate. Russia is in crisis, he said. “Its economy is standing on fragile glass legs.” Georgia, on the other hand, is keeping the global financial crisis at bay.

He was a suave central banker and she a “gas princess”, a young politician desperate to make her mark. In 1998 Yulia  Tymoshenko, now Ukraine’s prime minister, said she knew her destiny lay with Viktor Yushchenko, who went on to become president.

“We understood that we are a team,” she said at that time.

It’s an assertion Yushchenko disputes — a clash of views that has defined this partnership since they overturned a Soviet-style leadership in the 2004 “Orange Revolution” and vowed a modern, Western future for Ukraine’s 47 million people.

Then they stood shoulder-to-shoulder — her revolutionary speeches firing up crowd after crowd, his more academic approach comforting those who feared she was reckless in her pursuit of power.

Now barely on speaking terms, their bickering over policy and outlook could force the former Soviet republic into the third parliamentary election in as many years.

But was their partnership only ever a marriage of convenience?

In 1999, the tough former businesswoman, dubbed the gas princess because of her success in the cut-throat world of post-Soviet energy dealings, became deputy prime minister for energy in Yushchenko’s government. She was dropped in 2001 and former President Leonid Kuchma launched a corruption case against her.

Some Ukrainian media say it was Yushchenko, fearful for his political future, who agreed to let her go, opening the way for corruption charges she says were fabricated by Kuchma.

Since then, many think the pair’s jealousies and mistrust of each other have made them squander the chance to steady Ukraine on a path towards Western integration and reform.

She lasted less than a year as Yushchenko’s first prime minister, sacked after they fell out over policy, particularly her calls for a broad review of 1990s privatisations.

Now sporting her trademark peasant braid, she is back as prime minister. Many analysts say Yushchenko is desperate to challenge her lead in the opinion polls, which suggest she would win a presidential election and gain seats in any vote for parliament.

Accusing her of dangerous populism that threatens to wreck the economy, Yushchenko has come out fighting. His office has accused her of being a traitor for not openly supporting Georgia after its brief war with Russia over South Ossetia.

He says she has driven the economy to the brink, with inflation reaching a record 30 percent earlier this year. His office says she is selling Ukraine out to the Russians to ensure Moscow’s support for the election.

But she denies all charges and is trying to convince her doubters that she can be pragmatic.

She has called for Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party to return to the ruling coalition after he said the government had collapsed — a departure from her usual fiery stance which is bound to antagonise Yushchenko even further.

This battle of wills looks set to run.

Tension is mounting around the Black Sea following Russia’s recognition of two Georgian regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as independent states.  

Russia said its navy was monitoring ”the build-up of NATO forces in the Black Sea area” as the U.S. Navy shipped humanitarian supplies to Georgia on Wednesday.

In a move that could further aggravate Russia, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said he wanted to discuss charging Russia more for the lease of a naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, which is part of Ukraine.   

Ukrainian leaders say they fear they might be next on Russia’s hit list, a concern echoed by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. He told France’s Europe 1 radio: ”I repeat that it is very dangerous, and there are other objectives that one can suppose are objectives for Russia, in particular the Crimea, Ukraine and Moldova.”

Analysts say the Crimea region, in southern Ukraine, could be used by Russia to destabilise Ukraine. Not only does it host Russia’s Black Sea fleet, but the majority of people living there are ethnic Russians.                                                            

It would not be the first time Crimea has been at the heart of a war. The territory has been conquered many times and has been controlled by people including Goths, Huns, Bulgars and Greeks. 

The Russian Empire lost the Crimean War of 1854-1856 against an alliance of France, Britain, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire but the war is regarded by many Russians as a glorious defeat.

Crimea was again the scene of heavy fighting during World War Two, when it was occupied by Nazi Germany and Sevastopol was under siege from October 1941 until it succumbed in July 1942. Its resistance is regarded by many Russians as a heroic struggle against the odds.

Eighteenth-century Empress Catherine the Great built the neo-classical port at Sevastopol to house the Russian Navy after taking decades to conquer the Crimean region. The pride and joy of the Russian military, the region was granted to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954. After the Soviet Union fell, Moscow was forced to lease the harbour space under a deal that expires in 2017. 

Could this region — a popular holiday destination because of its green mountains, deep-blue sea and sunny climate — really be at the heart of a new war as Ukraine seeks membership of NATO and the European Union?

Ukrainian politicians say Russia’s actions in Georgia are unacceptable and they fear the worst. ”What has happened is a threat to everyone, not just for one country. Any nation could be next, any country. When we allow someone to ignore the fundamental right of territorial integrity, we put into doubt the existence of any country,” Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said on Wednesday.  

Moscow says Ukrainian politicians are trying to antagonise Moscow. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin accused Kiev on Wednesday of stirring tensions and hinted that some politicians wanted to trigger a tough response from Moscow to boost their own standing. ”This is a cynical and dangerous game,” he said.  

Political analysts acknowledge tensions are running high but say there is good cause to hope conflict can be avoided. ”There is a reason to be wary in the short-term future, there is a threat in that Ukraine is similar to Georgia in terms of what has happened in recent years,” said one analyst, Oleksander Dergachev. ”But I find it difficult to think that the threat posed is a military one. Russia relies on the fact that it has more of an influence over Ukraine economically.”
       

The people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia were celebrating on Tuesday after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree recognising the independence of the two regions. 

Western leaders responded with harsh words. U.S. President George W. Bush said it increased world tensions and Britain called for “the widest possible coalition against Russian aggression in Georgia,” where the two regions lie. 

But what can the West do to punish Russia or discourage it from any similar acts in the future? 

Military action has never been a realistic option since Russia sent tanks and troops to halt Georgia’s assault on South Ossetia. United Nations sanctions are also out of the question because Russia ihas the right of veto on the U.N. Security Council.

Major powers are also reluctant to do anything that might encourage Moscow to withdraw its help with U.N. sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme and transit support for NATO forces in Afghanistan. 

Retaliation could involve Russian membership of the big international clubs: excluding Russia from the Group of Eight (G8) top industrial democracies or blocking its bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). 

But any action will be carried out with the nagging thought at the back of Western leaders’ minds - Moscow is no longer the economic basket-case of Soviet times and, riding a tide of petrodollars from soaring oil prices, western Europe depends on Russian oil and gas.

Russian leaders have signalled they are not troubled by the Western reaction, partly because the Kremlin sees strong public support at home for its actions in Georgia and in the stand-off with the West, and partly because of the wealth it now has from its natural resources.

When NATO suspended activities with Russia, Moscow responded with a shrug of the shoulders, saying it was also freezing activities with the defence alliance. Moscow also plans to halt visits by senior NATO officials and joint military exercises with the alliance.

The European Union could, in theory, send in peacekeepers or break off talks with Russia over a wide-ranging strategic partnership, or even announce economic sanctions such as curbing existing trade arrangements. Moscow has shown no sign of concern over this - such moves would risk Moscow cutting energy supplies to Europe.

“Nothing scares us, including the prospect of a Cold War, but we don’t want it,” Medvedev said on Monday. “In this situation, everything depends on the position of our partners.”            

Does Russia have the upper hand? Perhaps. But despite the talk about a Cold War, there are also reasons to believe it is not about to start and that conflict can be contained.

Moscow’s confidence and strength rests largely on high prices for energy and other natural resources and it is still a far cry from the military force it was in Soviet times. Moscow also no longer controls large swathes of eastern and central Europe and no longer has the huge influence it once enjoyed in other parts of the world. The Kremlin is also likely to be concerned about investment flows into Russia, which ratings agency Fitch says could be affected by the rising tensions. 

Mikhail Kasyanov, a former Russian prime minister turned Kremlin opponent, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying Moscow’s decision was “one more step towards the self-isolation of the Russian Federation from the international community.”

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov believes isolation is not looming for Russia: ”I don’t believe this should really be a doomsday scenario. I believe common sense should prevail.” 

When thousands in the streets of the Ukrainian capital Kiev and the Georgian capital Tbilisi overthrew Soviet-style rulers, many felt warm in the embrace of the West.

Western support for the opposition — open and behind the scenes –  helped many people overcome fear of Soviet-style reprisals to stand for days outside Georgia’s parliament in 2003 or to pitch orange tents on Kiev’s main thoroughfare in late 2004, providing a lasting image of “people power” overthrowing a stale leadership.

Washington, or at least organisations with close political ties with the Bush administration, had courted opposition parties in both countries, coaching in the methods of democracy or securing “regime-change” as they sought to end the rules of President Leonid Kuchma and Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze. 

But the new leaders, and their teams, soon found that the attentions of an adoring West didn’t last for long. Ukraine’s team of President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko soon fell apart.                                                                                                                                                                             The West grew tired of the constant bickering of the Ukrainian leaders, unable to agree on almost any policy, while a resurgent pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich, who lost a rerun of the presidential election, encouraged unity in his own party and rose in popularity.

In Georgia, Saakashvili cracked down on post-election protests last year and now some blame him for taking Tbilisi into a war it could never win.  

The war in South Ossetia has frightened Ukraine. Yushchenko was quick to turn to the United States, saying he considered “U.S. support for Ukraine to be very important”.

But has the West given up? Ukraine and Georgia have been promised membership of NATO one day but the alliance decided at a summit in April not to give them a road map to membership.

Tomas Valasek, director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform, said Georgia could be ruled out of NATO membership for the time being. ”There will be allies who will say that this government is not creating stability, if anything it has done the exact opposite … you don’t want an ally in NATO that has a propensity to act the way that Saakashvili did.”

 But it could go either way for Ukraine.

“You could argue that no one will go to war over Ukraine, and then it will be difficult to invite Ukraine into NATO,” Valasek said. “Or the allies might decide this — that it is important that we prevent Russia acting irresponsibly in the neighbourhood, and it is important to send a message to say we will not be discouraged by what happened in Georgia.”

Did Italy unwittingly trigger the crisis in South Ossetia and then play a central role in stopping it? It may not be the view in most of the world but you could come to that conclusion from reading some Italian papers.

First, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was quoted in a report by French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy on Wednesday, which was reproduced in full on the front page and pages 2 and 3 of Corriere della Sera, as saying that he was first alerted to the situation in South Ossetia by reports in the Italian press that he saw while on a dieting holiday in Italy.

“I am in Italy, for a slimming cure, and I am about to leave for Beijing. Then, in the Italian papers, I read: ‘Preparations for war in Georgia.’ You understand? There I am, relaxing, in Italy, and I read that my country is preparing for war! Realising something is wrong, I quickly return to Tbilisi,” Saakashvili told his French interviewer.

Besides the intriguing idea of anyone trying to lose weight in Italy, the piece suggests the Italian press had a central role in the Georgian president’s decision to try to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

According to another Italian media outlook, the weekly magazine Tempi (on their website only, since the print version has been suspended for summer holidays), Italy also played a central role in stopping the five-day conflict that it may have contributed to starting.

Tempi quoted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as saying that it was he who persuaded Vladimir Putin not to let his tanks go all the way to Tbilisi, thus avoiding what Berlusconi said would have been a “useless bloodbath”.

When Reuters took the precaution of checking the quotes with Berlusconi’s press office, we were first told: “If that’s what they write, go ahead and pick it up.” We also passed on the quotes to Moscow to get a response from Putin’s office, to clarify whether Berlusconi really has such influence on the Russian premier and former president.

Very soon, Berlusconi’s office told us it was putting out a statement to deny the juiciest quotes in the Tempi interview, where Berlusconi was quoted as saying: “Thank God my friend Putin listened to me. Otherwise there is no bloody way the Russian tanks would have stopped 15 km from Tbilisi. We have avoided a useless bloodbath.”

The quote seemed to echo Berlusconi’s election jingle “Meno male che Silvio c’e” (”thank goodness for Silvio”). But it was too good to be true, according to his press office at Palazzo Chigi. They said these quotes were not legitimate, were not the kind of language Berlusconi would have used anyway, and were the fruit of a misunderstanding at best, at worst pure invention.

The Italian prime minister, now in his third term in power, does have the ear of the Russian leader, who was the first foreign leader to visit him after the Italian conservative leader’s election victory in April, at his villa in Sardinia (see picture). The newspaper owned by Berlusconi’s brother, Il Giornale, reported on Aug. 12 — the day Russia ordered a halt to the fighting — that the Italian leader was mediating and “exercising moral-suasion” on Putin. The same paper later quoted Berlusconi as saying: “Putin told me ‘Talk to Bush’. And Bush told me ‘Talk to Putin’. In the end we achieved a major result.”

A poster at the entrance to the World War One exhibition at London’s Imperial War Museum depicts the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, minutes before they were shot dead as they toured the streets of Sarajevo in an open topped car. The two bullets triggered World War One. Alliances quickly came into play and an argument between Austria and Serbia drew in Russia, Germany, France, Belgium and Britain.

Europe was at war.

On August 8 this year Russia sent its forces into Georgia to repel Tbilisi’s attempt to wrest control of the pro-Russian, breakaway region South Ossetia. Georgia, like Ukraine, has been pressing to join NATO but has only been promised membership of the alliance at an unspecified future date. What would have happened if Georgia had already secured NATO membership, as it wished, at the alliance’s meeting in Bucharest back in April?

Would the conflict have dragged in fellow NATO members including the United States, Britain and Germany? By invoking NATO’s Article V mutual defence clause, the Georgians could have required other nations to come to their assistance.

Could this have led to another European war at a time when the West’s guard was down and the Cold War years seemed consigned to history?

In the days after the conflict began, a senior envoy from a European state opposed to Georgian NATO entry told Reuters: “Thank heavens we didn’t take them in… No one in NATO wants to be dragged into a war in the Caucasus because of (President Mikheil) Saakashvili’s miscalculations.”

What do you think? 

Ever since Russia launched a massive counter-offensive in response to Georgia’s attempt to retake the pro-Russian, breakaway region of South Ossetia, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has been omnipresent in Western media. He has appeared on CBS, CNN, BBC and pretty much every other English-language TV channel to accuse Russia of penetrating Georgia far beyond Ossetia, planning an assault on the capital and plotting his overthrow. 

On Aug 11 he wrote an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal warning Georgia’s fall would mean the fall of the West.

At the start of the conflict the verdict was unequivocal. Saakashvili was winning the media war hands down. While the Kremlin’s press operation was largely silent, Saakashvili, an urbane, U.S.-educated lawyer, was assured in putting Georgia’s case. The world’s media and many political leaders swung behind him (in words if not deeds).

But is the tide turning? Saakashvili’s wall-to-wall media coverage may be starting to work against him and the Russians have become more nimble in dealing with the media and countering Saakashvili’s accusations.

Even close ally the United States has reined him in, knocking down his assertion that U.S. forces would take control of Georgia’s airports and ports.
Is Saakashvili’s well-oiled public relations machine starting to work against him? Is he losing sympathy internationally?

The Caucasus tinderbox is alight again. How far will the flames spread this time and what can the outside world - the United States, the European Union, NATO - do to extinguish them?

The strategic significance of this mountainous region stretches back through history.

To the west lies the Black Sea, to the east the Caspian, to the south the Mediterranean, Iran and Turkey.

In the past Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and the Russian tsars struggled to control its trade routes. Today Russia and the West are competing for influence over its energy pipelines carrying Caspian oil to world markets.

The Caucasus’ blue mountains and fiercely independent people have caught the imagination of Russian writers, Lermontov and Tolstoy. It has created only headaches for political leaders.

Georgia’s pro-Russian breakaway region South Ossetia is the latest battle ground in a long-running conflict.

Will the fighting, involving Russian and Georgian troops end there, or will another of Georgia’s breakaway regions Abkhazia seize the opportunity to press its claim for autonomy?

And what of Chechnya, a thorn in Russia’s side for nearly two centuries. Moscow sent in the troops to bring Chechnya to heel in 1994 and again in 1999. Will it try again to free itself of Moscow’s influence?

And what can the international community do to end the fighting. Dependent on Russian oil and gas, Europe has little or no room for manouevre. The United States has provided vocal backing of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, but he would be misguided to expect more. So who can put out the flames?