Mikhail Saakashvili is in the same position as Slobodan Milosevic. The Kosovar and Ossetian conflicts are nearly identical, and Russia wants to put him on trial for war crimes... just like the West planned to do with Milosevic. Saakashvili has nothing to rely on but propaganda, press spin and the surprising restraint shown by Russia up to this point, along with the irrational support of a public that rallies around him when the country is at war. The same thing happened in Yugoslavia... Serbs watched their country destroyed and rallied around the idiot who got them
into the war to begin with. But with the U.S. sending "humanitarian aid" to the region and pledging to see what is needed to reconstruct Georgia's military, I have little doubt that Saakashvili will not suffer the same fate as Milosevic, no matter what atrocities he's committed, unless he pushes yet further. I find it questionable whether he entirely WANTS the conflict to stop... there have been reports of minor skirmishes and Georgian forces still in South Ossetia, and I get the impression that Saakashvili is still trying to leverage the U.S. into the conflict.... he has even invoked rhetoric about the Holocaust, claiming Russian troops are setting up concentration camps to slaughter Georgians in an effort to convince the West to militarily intervene, which seems to be entirely untrue. He's claimed Russian troops are headed for Tbilisi, but if that were true, they'd have been there long ago. After all, if he can survive this debacle, he can bring in an enormous amount of U.S. wealth by turning his country into a flashpoint between the U.S. and Russia. If he can bring in U.S. military bases, the same sort of military and domestic aid that Israel enjoys, and play a game of brinksmanship with Russia he'll actually profit from his country's relevance to world affairs. He's already got Western dependence on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that he has partial control over... this guy's in a pretty sweet position if he lives long enough to enjoy it. And from the very fact that he made his move on South Ossetia, we can see he's quite the gambler. This whole mess may have just broken out because some petty politician saw an opportunity to make his country important. If Saakashvili survives, you can bet that even more money and weapons will saturate that long-neglected part of the world in the very near future. That bodes remarkably ill for the cause of world peace.
Regarding Abkhazia, the rebel forces there attacked the Kodori Gorge after Georgia attacked Ossetia and after Russian troops moved into both Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is impossible to tell whether the Russians assisted the attack on the Gorge or not... Saakashvili says they did, the Russians and Abkhazians deny it, saying it's just the rebels. Either way, the attack continued after Dimitry Medvedev said Russian forces were ending hostilities. The Gorge has been described as essential to Abkhazia's defense and as a perfect Georgian launching pad for attacks on Abkhazia.
As for Israel, they were selling weapons to Georgia but Russia demanded they stop mere days before the conflict broke out. They agreed. Some months previously, they had withdrawn the military advisors who were training Georgian troops to prepare them for war with Russia.
The U.S. also has military advisors there.
The Israelis have sent an emergency El-Al airlines flight to Tbilisi to retrieve their citizens.
By the way, in neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan tensions are also high. The Russian onslaught into Georgia can actually be seen as a peacekeeping measure which has prevented the conflict from spreading and engulfing countless more lives.
The Azerbaijanis tend to see it as a resurgence of Russian imperialism.
But Armenians fear that if Georgia prevailed in South Ossetia it would renew an ongoing ethnic bloodbath between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the province of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Armenians' concerns are justified. And as usual, it would seem the only thing the West cares about is access to oil reserves and the extension of its "sphere of influence". Humanitarian concerns be damned.
Joshua Kucera, who toured the region recently, wrote some interesting articles on the region for Slate... they're worth a read.