Russia is not only protecting its people in South Ossetia but confronting Georgia, a former ally now aligned with the US, writes Daniel McLaughlin
THE FORMER Soviet Union is studded with so-called frozen conflicts, but none has flared up with the ferocity of South Ossetia.
Armenia and Azerbaijan still argue over Nagorno-Karabakh, Moldova has made little ground trying to woo its separatist region of Transdniestr, and Georgia is intent on reasserting control over the spectacular, sub-tropical Black Sea region of Abkhazia.
They, and the dispute over South Ossetia, are the jagged edges that remained when the Kremlin's empire peeled apart with relatively little bloodshed.
In the 1990s, Russia played a game of geopolitical containment in its backyard, as Boris Yeltsin sought to quell rebellion in Chechnya while holding the restive Russian Federation together in the teeth of a communist revival and regular financial turmoil.
However, enriched by record energy prices and emboldened by the pugnacious Vladimir Putin, Russia has sought to reassert its influence over what it calls the "near abroad", an area in which it resents the growing influence of the United States and European Union.
Of Russia's neighbours, Georgia has become a particular worry to the Kremlin that Putin passed on to his protege, Dmitry Medvedev, earlier this year.
Georgia's US-educated president Mikheil Saakashvili has had the Pentagon help train his armed forces to bring them closer to the standard required by Nato, which he hopes to join as soon as possible.
His eagerness to take a chunk of the Kremlin's former dominions into Nato has won him major support from Washington and the EU, as has Georgia's importance as a transit route for gas and oil heading west from the Caspian and bypassing Russia.
Saakashvili's disappointment was immense, then, when Nato refused to put Georgia formally on the path to membership at this year's summit, after Germany and France complained that such a move would anger energy-rich Russia.
Georgian officials say that those countries' fear of Moscow's wrath emboldened the Kremlin to step up provocations in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and recent months have witnessed a series of shootings and bomb blasts which Tbilisi has blamed on Russia and the separatists, and vice versa.
In its bid to prevent Kosovo's independence, Moscow threatened to respond to any such declaration by recognising the sovereignty of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - even though it is ultimately terrified of any precedent that could embolden separatists in Russia's Caucasian republics, like Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.
"It boils down to Kosovo independence, Nato's Bucharest summit and possibly also Russian internal politics and the transfer of power," said Svante Cornell, co-director of the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy.
"Irrespective of who triggered this recent action, the general direction of Russian policy is clear, which is: we are taking control of these territories, and we're not even pretending that we're not."
But among experts on Russia and the Caucasus, there seemed to be no consensus on why South Ossetia's slowly thawing frozen conflict had suddenly become a torrent.
While each side blamed the other for provoking all-out fighting, some analysts suggested that both Tbilisi and Moscow may have seen this as a good time to change "facts on the ground" in the Caucasus - with Georgia hoping Russia would react slowly as Medvedev settles into the Kremlin, and Russia banking on Washington being distracted by its presidential election campaign, and the EU fearful of the threat to Russian fuel supplies.
Other commentators said Saakashvili had little choice but to move against what Georgian officials call a criminal regime funded by Russian handouts and the profits of smuggling, and with an ever-growing arsenal of weaponry from its sponsor to the north.
"At the end of the day, the Georgians realise that time is not on their side and they could not let South Ossetia and Abkhazia become even more messy and Russian influence even stronger," said Tomas Valasek of the Centre for European Reform.
Contraband, arms - and now Russian troops and mercenaries - enter South Ossetia via the Roki Tunnel, a 3.5km-long pass through the Caucasus that links the province with Kremlin-controlled North Ossetia. Russian and South Ossetian peacekeepers do their utmost to prevent their erstwhile Georgian colleagues and monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe from observing what comes through the tunnel and then makes its way to the separatist capital of Tskhinvali along a road that has been freshly laid by the Russians.
For many Georgians, the true purpose of this so-called Road of Life was revealed yesterday, as it carried Kremlin men and armour towards Tskhinvali, and a waiting Georgian military that has been beefed up by recent investment, new equipment and US training.
"This could be a prolonged and bloody conflict with an unpredictable end," said military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "It's a hell of a logistical nightmare to try and take and keep South Ossetia against a rather fine Georgian military."
Daniel McLaughlin recently reported from South Ossetia