… Some pertinent questions have to be raised what role the US had in the Georgian drama: It is dead certain that US intelligence knew about the amassing of Russian forces in the Northern Caucasus. If they knew, Saakashvili knew it as well. Why then did the Georgian leadership still start its military assault on South Ossetia. They certainly could not have it done without the knowledge of the US. Did they do it against the will of the US? Why is Randy Scheunemann, a former consultant of Georgia’s government an important adviser of John McCain? The latter, a confessed close friend of Mikheil, stands a lot to gain of a freeze in US-Russian relations.

… NATO has halted the consultation mechanism in the framework of the NATO-Russia Council, founded in Rome in 2002. Actually this does not hurt Russian interests anymore than it does NATO’s interests. The creation of a NATO-Georgian Commission puts Georgia at the same status as Ukraine, which is working with NATO in such a format since 1997. The symbolism of this decision is important, in practice it does make whole lot of a difference. As to the promises to offer Georgia NATO membership in principle: NATO had, of course, to stress its committments made at the Bucharest Summit in April. One big difference though: NATO seems to have agreed to grant Georgie a MAP at a foreign minister’s meeting in December DEPENDING on Russia’s performance in Georgia in the months ahead.

… NATO, EU and the US are in a difficult situation now. On the one hand, Russia’s military onslaught has revealed the lack of substance of the West’s solidarity committments before the events; this prompts western leaders now to adopt most radical rhetoric against Russia and launching plans to further expand NATO and build up military infrastructure in the eastern European member countries of NATO. It would be highly unfortunate though if western reaction of sharp rhetoric would spin out of control and derail western-Russia co-operation.The west might dwindle into a highly damaging pre-cold war situation. This would be in the interest of neither party.
… Information is disseminated that French President Sarkozy while in Moscow has allowed Russian forces to remain in a puffer zone of a few kilometres outside the South Ossetian ‘border’.

… As expected, Russia is now making use of two weak points of the truce agreement: firstly, they stress that Russian troops are granted by the text to take ‘additional mechanisms’ to secure stability in the conflict regions. Secondly, they take advantage from the fact, that the agreement does not specify a time schedule for the withdrawal of Russian troops. Thus, Russia will withdraw at a time of its own choosing. According to Russian foreign minister Lavrov, Russia will increase the number of its peacekeepers to a level which is not defined by the armistice; only then Russian regular forces will withdraw.

… Mikheil Saakashvili has signed a truce agreement with Russia. This was announced at a press conference with Condi Rice in Tibilissi on August 15th. The agreement has still not been made public. Saakashvili insisted that this agreement does not prejudge a final settlement of the conflict regions. Saakashvili never used the word ‘Russia’ or ‘Russians’; he instead spoke of ‘barbarians’ and ‘cold-blooded killers’.

As was to be expecte there are two major bones of contention between the two sides: How to interpret Russia’s right to undertake ‘additional security mechanism’ until an international mechanism is agreed upon and what the formula about ‘international negotiations about the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia’ means.

… It is now known that Georgian President Saakashvili has not yet signed the French peace proposal. Allegedly, he opposes to table the plan in the Security Council of the United Nations. He opposes Art. 5 of the plan, which grants Russia the right to take ‘additional security actions’ in the region UNTIL a decision is made on an ‘international mechamism for stabilisiing of the conflict zone’. The Georgian side demands that such a decision already had to be outlined in the very same SC resolution.