It is impossible at this point to conduct a thorough analysis of the causes and long-term aftermaths of the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and the Russian operation to coerce Georgia to peace that followed it, because the information that continues to come in – both as news and analysis – is nothing but a continuation of the media war. Yet it is hard to overestimate the significance of this armed conflict as it was the first instance since the breakup of the Soviet Union where Russia used force at its own initiative to defend its rights outside its territory. (The activities of the 11th Army under the command of General Alexander Lebed in Moldova in 1992, which came on the heels of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, were actually a continuation of Soviet policies. The campaign was steered by Lebed of his own free will and strongly disapproved of by Moscow. The march of Russian paratroopers into Pristina in 1999 was an act of propaganda rather than defense. Also, Russian peacekeepers were deployed in this region through an international community resolution and not by a unilateral Russian decision.)
That is why I will try to draw up some provisional remarks and conclusions.

THE LOGIC OF THE GEORGIAN INVASION

It is probably not a mistake to say that Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to invade South Ossetia was prompted by two closely intertwined factors:

He needed a small war that he could win, since there is nothing more instrumental for boosting one’s own political ranking than successful military action, and Saakashvili’s popularity rating at the time of the invasion was much lower than it was during the much-lauded Rose Revolution (it is enough to recall the opposition’s protests in November 2007);

Saakashvili craved the restoration of Georgian sovereignty over the former autonomous republics that had drifted away in the early 1990s. Every nation has a natural concern for safeguarding its state territory and the Georgians naturally felt acute pain about the lack of Georgian control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It was likewise natural to expect that the nation would enthusiastically hail the restoration of Georgia’s constitutional order in these two territories regardless of the possible huge number of casualties among peaceful Ossetians. The indigenous population of any country attaches a much greater value to its own statehood than to the lives of immigrants and ethnic minorities, and Georgia is no exception in this respect. A successful operation in South Ossetia would have become a second stage of the restoration of Georgia’s territorial integrity (the toppling of the Aslan Abashidze regime in Adzharia in 2004 could be considered the first phase of the effort). The re-absorption of Abkhazia that, according to the data available at the moment, was planned as a follow-up to the defeat of South Ossetia, would have become a third stage.

In other words, Saakashvili had both personal and state objectives in mind – boosting his popularity rating and forcefully re-absorbing rebellious territories. Remarkably, his labeling of the incursion into Tskhinvali as “an operation to restore the constitutional order” had formal grounds. First, the government in Tskhinvali and its volunteer guard units were completely illegal under the Georgian constitution and their elimination (including the physical destruction of their allies in South Ossetia) was not a war against a sovereign state or the genocide of a people that had the right to self-determination, but a lawful restoration of order in a rebellious region. Second, combat actions in South Ossetia were designed precisely as a punitive police operation – Saakashvili hardly expected that Russia would take strong measures to protect civilians in its peacekeeping contingent’s zone of responsibility. He reckoned that South Ossetian armed guard units alone would not hold out against Georgian armed forces for a long time, and even volunteers from North Ossetia would not help as their support would not arrive in time.

It is obvious that the operation had a rather simple military and political plan: a powerful artillery shelling of all the possible spots of resistance; putting troops into the rebellious republic; defeating the remaining guard units (and, possibly, Russian peacekeepers, too); cleansing the territories; setting up agencies of power reporting to Tbilisi; and proclaiming that the constitutional order has been restored. Tskhinvali was to be occupied within one day and the whole operation was most likely designed to only take a few days.

Georgia had good chances for success. In the first place, the Georgians and South Ossetians had incomparable military potentials. The Georgian Armed Forces were equipped with tanks, heavy artillery weapons and salvo systems and had received training from U.S. instructors, while South Ossetia’s armed forces actually consisted of volunteer guard units. Also, the geography of Tskhinvali, which was surrounded by high areas controlled by Georgian forces, was conducive to anything but long defense. Thus Saakashvili could hope for a Blitzkrieg. Furthermore, the timing of the operation was specially chosen to coincide with the opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Saakashvili reckoned that Tskhinvali would have been defeated before the world leaders gathered in Beijing could react. Even if Russia chose to render military support to South Ossetia, it would be too late because a pro-Georgian administration would already be installed in Tskhinvali and it would be too late for Moscow to take any steps at all. It was more logical at the time to expect that Russia might not want to send its troops there at all (even if there were casualties among Russian peacekeepers) and that it would rather restrict its reaction to a couple of rancorous statements – something that the world had grown accustomed to – and sever direct communications with Georgia. Russia’s notes of protest would not frighten Mikheil Saakashvili – the winner, the restorer of Georgia’s territorial integrity and Washington’s favorite. In any case, NATO would provide unequivocal support to Georgia’s territorial integrity. Of course, the U.S. and its allies would express their condolences over the unavoidable victims among the South Ossetian population – but they would not regard this as the genocide of the Ossetian people.

The problem of presumable casualties requires special note. The data available today indicates that Georgian troops received an order to directly exterminate civilians in South Ossetia. It cannot be ruled out that in this way Saakashvili wanted to resolve the problem of Ossetian separatism once and for all. The most horrible thing is that, being the most pro-American and, consequently, the most pro-democratic president in the CIS, he would most certainly have gotten away with it. A confirmation of this can be found in numerous reports (often fake) about “the victims among the civilian Georgian population” that the Western mass media churned out after Russian troops went into South Ossetia and then into Georgia. Simultaneously, the Western media preferred to keep silent about the hundreds of Ossetians who had died during the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali. Remarkably, very similar methods of “resolving” the ethnic problem were popular among the former “fighters for independence” in what the West believes to be the most progressive post-Soviet countries – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. To this end, they formed national subdivisions of the SS that are highly advertised and mythologized these days.

To sum up, Saakashvili had plausible reasons for launching the operation in South Ossetia, as well as good chances for making it successful and for ensuring a durable political result, owing to NATO support and due to the extermination of the Ossetians. Thus the logic of the Georgian invasion – not its moral aspects – was practically immaculate.

THE RESULTS FOR GEORGIA

While the Russian media continue to describe Saakashvili as a psychically imbalanced individual predisposed to hysteria and who is mentally deranged, let us recall that his plan (or, rather, the reconstruction he proposed) was crowned with virtually total success. Tskhinvali was practically in the Georgian army’s hands just several hours after the start of the operation and the greater part of South Ossetia was occupied, as well. Neither world leaders nor Russia produced any reaction to the events, and the Georgians started setting up their own agencies of power on the seized territories. this allowed Tbilisi to make a vociferous statement on the success of the “operation to restore constitutional law and order.”

Russia’s response caught Saakashvili by surprise, but still the Georgian military proved capable of offering strong resistance to the advance-guard units of Russia’s troops and even to organize a counteroffensive of a kind, since some areas of Tskhinvali, which the Russian Defense Ministry reported had been liberated from Georgian forces, again fell under Georgian control in the dark hours of August 9. Even official reports confirmed a loss of several dozen tanks and several warplanes, which testifies to the Georgian army’s good fighting capability. But it is equally natural that Georgia could not fight back for too long, and Russian troops took the tactical initiative on August 10, forcing the Georgian units to chaotically retreat and flee. Georgia’s naval force – as well as the Air Force – suffered heavy losses. The Russians destroyed two new army bases and seized large amounts of armored vehicles, artillery weapons, small arms, and transport vehicles. The damage done to Georgia’s defense potential (including the command infrastructure) rules out any Georgian military operations for the time being.

To all appearances, there was widespread panic in Georgia, as there were numerous reports about efforts to organize the defense of Tbilisi (and this proves that the Georgian leaders had expected the early appearance of Russian units in the Tbilisi suburbs). Also, the reports said residents of the city and some members of the Georgian political leadership had fled. Judging from news footage, Saakashvili was scared and lost, as his attempts to make any arrangements whatever with the Russian leadership bumped into a wall of silence. This kind of conduct displayed by the Georgian president gave food for contemptuous comments in the Russian media. Russian analysts and Georgian political oppositionists predict that Saakashvili will be forced to leave the political stage – he has squandered his popularity and Georgians are unlikely to forgive him for his military defeats (from Russian troops in South Ossetia to Abkhazian armed units in Abkhazia, where the Georgian Army was forced out of the Kodori Gorge), for conduct unworthy of a state leader, and for the final loss of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Although this forecast has grounds, it does not look fully trustworthy. Using the trump card of opposing Russia’s aggression and showing himself as a dedicated fighter for Georgia’s self-identity, sovereignty and democratic values in the Caucasus, Saakashvili may consolidate the Georgians around his personality. Whatever the causes of an intervention of foreign troops might be and however noble the objectives they pursue are, the majority of the population in the target country will always have painful feelings about it. This factor, as well as the Georgians’ ethnic mentality and the support given to Saakashvili by leading Western powers (in spite of a few statements decrying Saakashvili’s action, he has crucial significance for the West as a project, and short-term support guaranteed for him on the part of the U.S. and Britain as a minimum), means that his chances for political survival are rather high.

Let us mention that even if Saakashvili is forced to quit, his successor will hardly be any more tractable in relationship to Russia. The Georgians blame Russia for the loss of their territories and any politician who assumes power in Georgia will simply have to keep anti-Russian sentiment at a high level. In addition, the strong U.S. impact on political decision-making in Tbilisi predestines the arrival – at least in the next few years – of only those candidates who will keep up the current anti-Russian, and allegedly pro-NATO, vector of state policy.

The breakaway regions are completely lost for Georgia now – simply due to the fact that non-Georgians will not be able to live again in a united Georgian state after the extermination of the Ossetians in Tskhinvali. As it often happens, the plan that looked so promising in terms of a quick and efficacious untangling of the problem of separatism, produced the directly opposite results, making independence the only possible option for the Abkhazians and Ossetians and its recognition, the only possible option for Russia (as a guarantor of peace in the region, Russia can defend the rights of people living in South Ossetia and Abkhazia efficiently only if the two regions stay outside of Georgia’s sovereign territory; and the events of August 2008 showed the essential need of this defense). This means that while talks on a broad autonomy for the two republics, along with their de jure existence inside Georgia, were possible in theory before the conflict, one must forget about them for good now.

Importantly, there was no information about the involvement in combat operations of those who supported the administration of Dmitry Sanakoyev (the puppet leader of South Ossetian regions that were under Georgia’s control before the conflict) or the supporters of the so-called ‘Abkhazian government in exile,’ on the Georgian side. This means that there was a collapse of official Tbilisi policies toward the tumultuous republics. The Saakashvili regime has failed to raise reliable supporters either among the Ossetians or Abkhazians. Even if the Georgian leadership had succeeded in seizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it would have to resort to purges of the local population; i.e., to genocide, to protect itself from a protracted guerilla war and unending outbursts of separatism in the two republics. Tbilisi would fail to place its marionettes in South Ossetia, as no appropriate candidates were in sight – any puppet must have at least some percentage of the people’s trust, but neither Sanakoyev nor the ‘Abkhazian government in exile’ had any.

Georgia beyond any doubt has emerged victorious from the first phase of the media war, as the leaders of most countries condemned Russia’s actions and spoke unanimously in Georgia’s support. At the same time, they said nothing about the Georgian leaders’ perfidy, as the invasion of South Ossetia began just hours after their own calls for peace negotiations. Nor did the West say anything about the totally unjustified cruelty, with which the Georgian Armed Forces acted against the civilian population in South Ossetia. The West was wholly focused on Russia’s “asymmetrical military reaction.” However, it is not clear to what degree the efforts of Georgian propaganda-mongers played a role in ensuring this unanimous support. The Mikheil Saakashvili project might be so important for the U.S. and NATO that the West could not afford to recognize its defaults, to say nothing of the crimes committed under its guise.

The international mass media seethed with bias and did not stop short of downright falsification in their coverage of the conflict. Russia was depicted as an aggressor and Georgia, as a tiny freedom-loving country that was heroically fighting an invasion under the command of its pro-Western leader. Any attempts to recount the events from the Russian or South Ossetian point of view were cut short. Suffice it to recall the notorious Fox TV interview of two Ossetian women who were simply cut off when their desire to thank Russia for its protection became clear. In other words, the world watched the conflict with Tbilisi’s eyes.

The political results of the conflict may seem advantageous for Georgia at first glance. NATO is ready to help the Georgians restore their military potential and certain information indicates it has already launched this aid. Also, NATO countries have put military ships in the Black Sea. Apart from the officially declared goal of delivering humanitarian aid to Georgia, these naval forces quite obviously are delivering military hardware, as well, and provide coverage of the Georgian coast from the sea.

The chances that Georgia will get NATO’s Membership Action Plan in December have gone up considerably. Germany, which had earlier actively opposed NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, has confirmed through a statement by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel that Georgia will join NATO. This in turn may produce a new surge or even an aggravation of tensions in the zones of the Georgian-Ossetian and Georgian-Abkhazian confrontation, which Russia’s successful military operation was meant to have eliminated.

And yet, the mention of Georgia’s foreign policy achievements is a mere instance of making a virtue of necessity, a palliation against military and political defeat. The incursion into South Ossetia deprived Georgia of its army and – once and for all – of one-third of its former territory. Saakashvili’s adventure in Tskhinvali ended in a total collapse, and even if Georgia gets NATO membership, this will not make up for its political losses.

THE RESULTS FOR RUSSIA

By standing up to defend the South Ossetian population – the majority of which are Russian citizens – from extermination by Georgian troops and to support its own peacekeepers, who had become targets of an unmotivated attack, Russia took the only action that was possible in that situation. The logic of defending the civilian population in the zone of one’s own peacekeeping control is immaculate from both the political and moral point of view, and the operation by the Russian troops was quite correctly described as “peace enforcement.” This was not a war against Georgia; this was a peacekeeping action aimed at coercing the aggressor to stop military operations.

One can assess the military and internal political outcome of this operation as successful:

- The Russian military command was able to promptly organize a counteroffensive against the Georgian Armed Forces;
- The Georgian army was forced out of South Ossetia and defeated;
- A telling blow was dealt to Georgia’s defense potential that rules out a repeat of the aggression in the short term;
- Most Russians (except for radical oppositionists) approved of the actions taken by the country’s political leaders and top brass;
- Russia coerced Georgia to peace efficiently and accurately, as it confined its actions to forcing the Georgian army out of South Ossetia and eliminating the Georgian defense machine. The Russian government did not succumb to the lure of making a victorious march to Tbilisi and supplanting Saakashvili, who has been a big headache;
 -The media war against Georgia did not turn into an anti-Georgian hysteria. Criticism was restricted to the incumbent Georgian leaders, and respect for the Georgian nation was always stressed;
- The Chechen battalions of Vostok (East) and Zapad (West) fought in Ossetia together with regular units of the Russian army, and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he was ready to send Chechen volunteers to the conflict zone. This provides a weighty argument against those who accuse Russia of double standards as a country that supports “separatists abroad” in the face of ruthless oppression of ethnic movements at home. Chechens fighting for Russia means that the Chechens link their destiny to Russia; hence they are not separatists. Thus the armed operations that the Russian Armed Forces had to conduct in Chechnya from 1994-1996 and from 1999-2001 should be treated as anti-terrorist operations, not as the genocide of a freedom-loving Chechen nation that was reluctant to live under the yoke of an oppressive Russian autocracy. This is an important ideological victory for Moscow but, unfortunately, both the Russian and Western media have not assessed it properly yet. Georgia did not get the same support from its puppet Dmitry Sanakoyev;
- Russia has demonstrated the sovereignty and independence of its foreign policy, and the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s independence came as the climax of this demonstration. The recognition as such was a carefully weighed-out political step, too. In the first place, Russia remained committed to the principle of a country’s territorial integrity to the very end. Russia found it possible to veer off from this only in an exclusive situation involving the mass killings of Russian citizens and after this same principle had been de facto discarded by the leading world powers (remember the recognition of Kosovo). Second, Russia observed the theory of international law as it recognized the independence of only those territories where the metropolitan nation had committed acts of unjustifiable cruelty that made the further existence of these territories within the metropolitan country impossible in principle (during the lifetime of the next two generations of people at least). No recognition of the independence of Moldova’s Dniester region or Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh followed;
- In spite of an avalanche of anti-Russian statements, the Kremlin had the stamina to hold its ground and warded off the measures taken against it with reciprocal measures, such as effectuating its own initiative on freezing relations with NATO. Simultaneously, it did not throw out any demonstrative challenges either to NATO or the EU, and showed its interest in good-neighborly – but equitable – relations in every imaginable way. This policy has proven to be fruitful. Western leaders were prepared to renounce any cooperation with Russia or to impose sanctions on it during or immediately after the conflict. The sanctions might go as far as this country’s expulsion from the G8; the refusal of membership in the World Trade Organization; and a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi or their relocation to some other country. (It is noteworthy that the Russian military operation made Sochi a much more secure place for the Olympics, as the risk of Georgia’s runoff invasion of Abkhazia and the outbreak of hostilities in the immediate vicinity of the Olympic capital has been removed.) Separate programs of cooperation were cancelled (for instance, the U.S. rejected joint military exercises with Russia). But when it became clear at the end of August that Russia would continue to abide firmly by the course it had embarked on, and that sanctions might also damage countries that introduced them, the anti-Russian statements lost some of their energy.
- The outcome of the talks held by EU foreign ministers revealed that no real measures against Russia would be taken despite calls from Poland and the Baltic countries to punish Russia. However, this does not mean the end of NATO’s continued expansion into the traditional zone of Russia’s influence;
- Russia cannot be viewed as a guided state anymore. The peace enforcement operation in Georgia and the ensuing recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia showed Russia’s ability to defend its sovereign interests not only in a declarative way or with the aid of effectual but inefficient actions (the turning back of the prime minister’s jet while on a flight over the Atlantic or the battle march of paratroopers into Pristina). Now Russia can do it with the use of force. It does not fear the declarations adopted against it and is able to counteract them. This represents the destruction of the post-Soviet unipolar world order;
- Russia has demonstrated – and this will become obvious to the whole world in time – that it is not an aggressor but, rather, a country defending human rights. The world is not ready to see Russia in that role yet, but it will have to get accustomed to it.

However, the operation also highlighted a range of serious problems.

- The Russian government offered an inadmissibly slow reaction to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and to the attack on Russian peacekeepers during the night of August 7 and into the early hours of August 8. A statement that the Russian army would extend its protection to the people of South Ossetia was aired too late – only on August 8. Had Moscow warned that it would use military force earlier, it might have made the Georgian leaders think and thus might have saved many lives. This procrastinating shows that the Russian government’s mechanism of adopting decisions in critical situations may be inefficient. A number of sources said this slowness was caused by the need to coordinate steps with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was in Beijing at the time. This in turn caused many to doubt the independence of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev;

- The Russian army suffered huge losses. While the losses of manpower mostly stemmed from the perfidious attack on Russian peacekeepers, the loss of dozens of units of combat equipment and several warplanes attests to the insufficiently high level of the combat capability of the Russian Armed Forces and to the fairly effective resistance of Georgian army units, at least in the first phase. Remarkably, the commanding officers who took part in the operation right in the combat area did not receive any medals. Nor did the mass media say much about those officers (which contrasts with the media promotion of General Troshev and General Shamanov during the second campaign in Chechnya). This offers tentative evidence that the Kremlin gave a rather low assessment to the commanders’ performance. The Defense Ministry had to admit that the actions of the Armed Forces revealed some shortcomings, but it did not report any details. Also, it is quite possible that military operations like the one against Georgia show the extent of the Russian army’s capability at the moment.

Russia remained in full diplomatic and informational solitude throughout the conflict, as only Cuba voiced support for the military operation. None of the CIS member-nations, not even Belarus, showed any solidarity with Russia. This indicates that CIS countries are reluctant to side fully with Moscow out of a fear of spoiling relations with the West in the first place, and that none of them wants to see a stronger Russia. In any case, the situation has revealed a generally apprehensive mood even in the region that Moscow has traditionally looked at as a zone of its special interests. Add to this the fact that the second country to recognize the independence of two new states was Nicaragua, not Belarus, although Abkhazia has said it wants to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus. Of course, some may consider this as a success of Russian foreign policy, since the first recognition came from a country located far outside the sphere of Russia’s influence. And yet it would be nice to see the countries located inside the zone of influence show on their part that the influence does exist. One should also note that even slight positive signs from the U.S. toward the Lukashenko regime were enough for Minsk to give up support – real, not verbal – for the Kremlin’s actions.

The fear of an excessively strong Russia prompted its neighbors to take steps that pose geopolitical risks to Moscow over the long term. Although such steps were easy to forecast and the Russian government was most definitely prepared to face them, this does not make them any less embarrassing. In the first place, a U.S.-Polish agreement was quickly signed on deploying an element of the U.S. national missile defense system on Polish territory. Second, the Russian Black Sea Fleet will almost certainly have to abandon its main base in Sevastopol after 2017. Meanwhile, claims that Sukhumi can provide an adequate replacement for Sevastopol do not hold water, as Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh has spoken out against an increase in Russia’s military presence in his country.

The results of this war are not at all unequivocal for Russia. By winning this victory, Russia tapped the limit of capabilities of its armed forces. We have seen perfectly well that troops trained and equipped under NATO standards can put up an effective resistance to Russia. We showed sovereign will and broke up the post-Belavezha Accords world order and now we will have to pay for this with a worsening of our relations with the West over the short term. As for the long term, we run the risk of sliding into a more or less overt standoff, for which Russia does not have the resources, ideology or geopolitical opportunities right now. The U.S. is unlikely to be ready to reconcile itself with the emergence of one more regional center of power that has displayed its anti-NATO orientation so sharply and that is ready to rebuff any encroachments on its interests so actively.

On the other hand, a return to the Cold War era is hardly likely, since neither the U.S. nor Russia want that. NATO countries do not have enough military or political resources now for a serious confrontation with Russia and that is why the chances are good that our two countries will return to a traditional cautious partnership after a period of bellicose statements in Moscow and in the West. The partnership, though, may have a new configuration – one where Russia will speak in the international arena in a much louder voice than previously and where it will have a much greater weight.
Still, one should not forget that the U.S. remains the world’s biggest economy (although it is going through a time of serious trouble now), that the countries friendly to it – EU countries and Japan – also belong to the group of leading economic powers, and that militarization programs give a strong impulse to national economies – exactly what the U.S. needs at the moment. And remember that the Soviet Union fell apart because its economy did not withstand the pressures of the arms race forced on it by the U.S.

WHAT’S NEXT?

I believe that the Russian leadership could benefit greatly now if it remembers the following:

- However obvious the need to rebuff anti-Russian actions may be, Russia must stay away from taking excessively aggressive military, economic and diplomatic steps and state – in every possible way – its interest in good-neighborly (and equitable) relations with other countries. President Medvedev and the government have coped with this job fairly well so far, as Moscow’s responses – the freezing of relations with NATO, the organization of joint war games with Venezuela – fit perfectly into the format of reasonable counteraction to NATO measures;

- Let us not succumb to the euphoria of victory or claim the role of a hegemon in the CIS and Eastern Europe, or try to teach a lesson to anti-Russian regimes. The date for Russian-Ukrainian negotiations over the price of natural gas is getting closer and it is important that we reach a reasonable compromise before the start of 2009 in order to avoid emergency shutdowns of export gas pipelines. In the light of the South Ossetian war, the world will definitely treat such shutdowns as a desire by Russia to use the energy baton against “a democratic Ukraine that has chosen the path of European integration;”

- Russia must build up the strength of its armed forces in every possible way – something Dmitry Medvedev has spoken about – and raise the efficiency of its control system in times of peace and war alike;

- The logic of investing Stabilization Fund resources in U.S. securities in the current situation is highly questionable. It might be desirable to consider an option for their alternative investment in Russian domestic projects;

We must not consider Abkhazia and South Ossetia as our vassals. These two countries have gone through too much to gain independence and they can join any other state only of their own free will and at their own initiative. Russia should not build up its military presence there. Also, it should refrain from attempts to place the two countries under its political control. It is sufficient that Abkhazia and South Ossetia have entrusted Russia with representing their interests to the outside world. And the fact that they have been recognized only by Russia so far provides Russian businesses with a unique opportunity to legalize their presence in the two countries and fasten them to Russia with the aid of economic levers. Simultaneously, they must remember that the legal owners of some property there may live in Georgia, too. Quite possibly, Russia might lead a search for a compromise concerning these properties. In addition, Russia should take part in resolving the problem of refugees.

* * *
We have been living in conditions of a post-Soviet, Belavezha Accords world order since 1991, and we have become used to that by now, although many people detest it. The Belavezha Accords era saw the harshest economic crisis in Russia in the 1990s; the drift of former Soviet republics into NATO; bombing raids in Serbia and Iraq; then the start of the rebirth of the Russian economy; a restoration – albeit partial – of prosperity for all Russian citizens; and the first timid attempts to oppose political pressure from the West. This world order collapsed in ruins in August 2008 and now we are witnessing the birth of a new world system. It is difficult to imagine today what it will look like exactly. We are certainly living in interesting times.