Russia Invades Georgia

With the US military bogged down and exhausted in Iraq, it no longer provides a deterrent to any country seeking to annex another country. Georgia is an ally of US. They've never been enamored with Russia. Perhaps they believed their "big" ally would come to their rescue. Who would want to an ally of the US today?
VOA News

Tensions between Georgia and Russia have escalated over the years as Moscow increased economic, commercial and political ties with the two breakaway regions. Over the past few months, tensions increased significantly as Tbilisi and Moscow took a series of military measures in the region: Moscow sent warplanes over the two regions and increased its military buildup in the area. Tbilisi responded in kind and sent unmanned reconnaissance planes over the breakaway regions.
"The sides of the conflict have been playing a kind of cat and mouse game for a couple of years now and they've always kind of pushed each other to the brink but then pulled back," said Sabine Freizer with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "Unfortunately, that's not what happened [in the past 24 hours] and what we've seen is a large scale military offensive throughout South Ossetia."
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That appeal was echoed by United Nations spokeswoman Michele Montas who described the conditions in South Ossetia as related by a worker for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
"A UNHCR staff member in that area has reported that many buildings and houses have been destroyed and that only military personnel are moving in the streets," said Montas. "Water is in short supply. Most transport has stopped and shops are running out of food."
Analysts, including Jason Lyall from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs, say if the conflict escalates to a full-blown war between Georgia and Russia, Tbilisi has very little chance of winning.
"Russia has about 100,000 troops in the region just because it's so heavily militarized from Chechnya and the other insurgencies that are going on next door," he said. "If this is a long war, Georgia will be in a considerable amount of trouble just because its forces are so much smaller: it only has about 27,000 soldiers and it would rely also on these militia groups that it is starting to reactivate as well. But in a long war Georgia would be in trouble."

Putin said today, that it was unfortunate this happened just before the grand opening at the Olympics. He seems to be implying it had been planned. Separatists were to provoke the Georgian military to invade, and the Russians would come to the rescue, effectively annexing this largely Russian populated part of Georgia. Georgia has no chance to defeat the Russians in the field, they could not stop the Russians from deposing their government and annexing all of Russia.
Clearly, Putin is claiming it's much of its old Eastern Europe and Central Asian sphere or influence. He is signaling to the West that these areas are off limits. He hopes to intimidate the Czech Republic in to backing out of its plan to base US Anti-ballistic missiles. The US is impotent to counter this move thanks to burning up all it's readiness in Iraq. NATO is more impotent than the US alone.
McClatchy Washington Bureau

It isn't clear what triggered such a large-scale military action by Georgia.
On Thursday night, Saakashvili accused the South Ossetians of attacking Georgian police, military patrols and civilians. He also said he'd ordered Georgian units not to return fire and that he was declaring "an immediate, unilateral cease-fire." Emergency peace talks had been scheduled for Friday.
Tkeshelashvili, the Georgian foreign minister, said her government did its best to hold the cease-fire but that it wasn't possible after separatist fighters staged widespread attacks on Georgian-controlled villages Thursday night and took up fighting positions that made it clear that more aggression was on the way.
South Ossetian officials denied that version of events, saying that the cease-fire was a ruse to soften their defenses before the Georgians attacked.
"He (Saakashvili) was not sincere. It was just a smokescreen . . . to carry out an ethnic purge," Dmitry Medoyev, the South Ossetian representative to Russia, said in a phone interview. Medoyev added that volunteer fighters from the caucus regions in Russia had been arriving all day to help South Ossetia.