It seems like Saakashvili’s little deadly adventure is over. For now:
Georgia has ordered its forces to cease fire, and offered to start talks with Russia over an end to hostilities in South Ossetia, Georgian officials say.
The Russian’s though will not immediately accept that. There are still points to be made. They will request a binding agreement from Georgia to never again use force against South Ossetia and Abkhazia. If Saak is not willing to sign that, I’d expect a few more bombs on Georgian military installations.
Allover I think the Putin-Mevedev pair has handled this one quite well. They certainly did not overreach. They could have done what Israel did to Lebanon 2006 but with much more justification. But air attacks on Georgia were very limited and only on a few military targets. Neither the BTC pipeline nor other civilian infrastructure was hit.
This was certainly not the use of ‘excessive force’ as the U.S. and the NATO chief mouthpiece claim.
The Georgians are furious over the whole affair and pissed about their ‘allies’:
"Many people can’t understand why the West failed to protect us," said Sandro, a student in Tbilisi.
"America was seen as an ally, and Georgian soldiers have been dying in Iraq in the interests of global security. But the West has shown that it doesn’t care about Russia invading other countries."
"All they did was express ‘concerns’ while bombs were falling on us," added Shalva, his friend.
One can expect some interior political fallout from this crisis. I doubt that Saak will stay in his current job much longer.
The bigger impact is that others will take notice. The Baltic countries, the Ukraine and Central Asian states now learned that they can not depend on the U.S. as an ally when the going gets tough.
Other points:
Some blogs have argued that Russia was prepared for this conflict and pulled Saak into a trap. Like me the Nightwatchers from AFCEA find that implausible. It took Russia some 12 to 15 hours to response to Georgia’s shelling of Tskhinvali. In response they sent in a regular armored battalion and only later reinforced that with the real quick reaction force, paratroopers and spetsnaz (special forces).
Next to Georgia the Ukraine was hoping to get into NATO. A Georgian paper claimed that one of the Russians jet was downed with an SA-5 missile. Georgia is not supposed to have those but the Ukraine does. Russia warned the Ukraine yesterday that support of this kind was not seen as a friendly act. Today the Ukraine pushed back:
Ukraine warned Russia on Sunday it could bar Russian navy ships from returning to their base in the Crimea because of their deployment to Georgia’s coast.
If that were really to happen, another war could be on soon (see here for background on the Crimea port issue.)