The latest from Fred Kagan, current as of 12:30 A.M.:

* The deployment of NATO warships to the Black Sea has definitely gotten Moscow’s attention, drawing a combination of bravado, threats, and shrugs from the Russian military. The key issue is most likely that Russia cannot match the naval buildup it sees coming in the Black Sea with its own vessels, at least not in a timely fashion. Moscow is reacting as though it has confidence that NATO ships will not do anything but sail around for a few weeks and leave, but it is manifesting its discomfort at the demonstration that it does not control the Black Sea.
* Russia continues to accuse Georgia of planning to re-attack South Ossetia, and has served notice that any American attempt to rearm Georgia to pre-war levels will be seen as American encouragement for such an attack.
* Russia is expanding its peacekeeping perimeter, but refuses to define its “security zone” with any precision. It acknowledges the presence of Russian forces in Poti, but obfuscates the basis and nature of that presence. Russian forces are cleansing South Ossetia of Georgians, but the evidence in the MoD releases is naturally oblique, and I will return to this issue in subsequent updates.
* Moscow is exerting a combination of pressures and promises on Ukraine, holding out the possibility of continued military-industrial collaboration but denouncing Ukrainian haggling over the Black Sea Fleet’s presence in Sevastopol. In general terms, the tenor of Moscow’s messages to Ukraine appears to be calming from its initial flurry of indignation. On the other hand, the Russians ostentatiously sortied the Black Sea Fleet flagship from Sevastopol, giving the Ukrainians no notice and initially offering a false explanation of its destination and the purpose of its mission. Moscow has thereby served notice that it will not respect President Yushchenko’s demands for notification of planned sorties, their destinations, and their purposes.
* Armenia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, China, and the Czech Republic have all been singled out in MoD releases for supporting Russia either by offering humanitarian aid to South Ossetia or by considering sending military advisors there under the auspices of the OSCE.
* The General Staff also announced that it is reviewing the experience of this conflict for lessons for Russian military modernization, particularly in the areas of suppressing enemy air defenses and in information operations.
* Strong evidence suggests that Moscow still aims to encourage the Georgians to remove Saakashvili from power and will continue to exert various forms of leverage, including the occupation of Georgian territory, to that end.

The latest from Fred Kagan:

* The Russian aim appears to be permanently neutralizing the Georgian military, annexing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and retaining the ability to intervene unilaterally in Georgia to any extent Moscow desires—including deposing the Georgian government.? Nothing the U.S. or NATO has done or has threatened to do appears to have weakened Russian determination in this regard.? Russia has matched every NATO/US move with a counter-move or a counter-threat of its own.? We are de facto in an escalation game with the Russians that they appear to be winning.? Worse still, Moscow does not appear to believe that the West has the will to escalate enough to win in the end.? Russia still hopes that it can split Europe from the U.S., and believes that it can do so.? It does not believe that even the annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will lead to meaningful long-term pain because Moscow believes that Russia has become an indispensible nation that the West cannot survive without.? We will therefore have to come to terms, ultimately, with whatever the Russians decide they want, according to this view.? There do not appear at this point to be any significant trends within the Russian government’s statements or behavior to suggest that the current Western approach is anything like adequate to prevent further escalation of this crisis.
* Russia has claimed that the U.S.-Poland agreement on BMD sites is aimed at Russia and threatens retaliation.? See below for details and links about this assertion.
* NATO has promised to reconsider Georgian membership in December and offered a variety of immediate assistance, but not military assistance.? The Russians have made it plain that they would regard any sort of military assistance to Georgia as an attempt to “rearm” Georgia to encourage Tbilisi to undertake a new “blitzkrieg” in South Ossetia.
* Abkhazia and South Ossetia have requested Russian recognition of their independence; the Russian Federation Council will hold an extraordinary session on August 25 to consider these requests.? A Russian parliamentarian stated that Russia was quite willing to allow both republics, once independent, to join the Russian Federation.
* The Russian military appears to have declared most of Georgia to be a no-fly zone, at least for Georgian military aircraft, enforcing this declaration by shooting down a Georgian UAV over the airbase at Vaziani, southeast of Tbilisi and well outside not only the boundaries of South Ossetia, but even the boundaries of any expanded “security zone” the Russians might wish to establish.
* Russia claims that its forces will be withdrawn in 3-4 days, but that withdrawal is “conditions-based”—Russia will withdraw from Georgia to the extent that the Georgian military moves back to its permanent bases.? The Russian military has made clear that it views the concentration of Georgian force around Georgia’s capital to be a violation of that agreement and a provocation.
* The Cold War filings are lining up, independent of what the U.S. or Russia does:? Belarussian President Lukashenko visited Abkhazia and South Ossetia; Latvian parliamentarians visited Tbilisi.
* The Russian press, at least, is using the occasion of Bashar al Assad’s visit to Moscow to claim that Russia should expand its ties and military bases in Syria in retaliation for Israel’s support to Georgia.
* Russia intends to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia soon, and subsequently to incorporate them into the Russian Federation.
* Russia intends to deter or prevent the U.S. or NATO from re-arming Georgia even to the pre-war level.
* Russia has generated enough pretexts for continued violations of Georgian sovereignty (beyond Abkhazia and South Ossetia) that it will be able to re-invade or attack from the air at any time for many months to come.

Previous updates can be found here.

There's "no smoking gun", but Brian Whitmore at Radio Free Europe tries to connect the dots.

An interesting nugget from today’s Rasmussen Daily Snapshot:

“Despite the Russian invasion of Georgia, daily tracking data shows no shift in voter priorities for Election 2008. Forty-one percent (41%) say economic issues are most important while just 22% name national security issues as the top priority.”

This is one of those situations that highlights the chasm that separates high end news gatherers (like the people who read this website or listen to Rush Limbaugh) and the vastly larger population of ordinary people. High end news gatherers, both those of the left and right, have focused on Georgia this week. Casual news gatherers? A different story.

On Wednesday night, I watched the local 11 o’clock news, something I hardly ever do. The smiling anchors didn’t mention the crisis in Georgia until 11:13. They did, however, tell me how I could address my chronic lower back pain well before then, so the experience wasn’t a total loss. Bear in mind that local news shows, like local talk radio shows, relentlessly cater their product to their customers’ interests. Make no mistake - they tend to have a solid sense of what’s on their viewers’/listeners’ minds. Rasmussen’s polling results confirm that the local news guys knew what they were doing this week using the crisis in Georgia as a lead-in to the extended weather forecast.

There’s a message in here for the candidates, albeit not one that Republicans necessarily want to hear.

From Fred Kagan:

• South Ossetia and Abkhazia are on a path to declare independence and be recognized by Russia.
• Russia has warned the U.S. to take no steps in Georgia that might “directly or indirectly” encourage Saakashvili to try to retake these areas, but says that it neither objects to nor will interfere with the U.S. provision of humanitarian assistance to Georgia. Russia is matching that humanitarian effort with one of its own in South Ossetia.
• Russian declarations have left a lot of room for the Russians to delay the departure of their forces from Georgia, to increase the number and quality of the “peacekeepers” left behind, and to demand the movement of several critical Georgian garrisons, including the one protecting the vital road junction at Gori, 30 km from Tskhinvali.
• Russian criminal prosecutors continue to prepare legal cases against Georgian leaders under the laws of the Russian Federation.
• All Georgian forces have left South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which the Russians now confirm.
• Russia acknowledges having occupied Gori on a variety of pretexts, but says it expects to leave Gori within a couple of days.
• Russia has indicated that it intends to review the “security zone” around South Ossetia in such a way that it might lead to the demand that Gori—the key military depot for the Georgian military—be disarmed.
• Medvedev has announced that the peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia will be maintained at highest alert, and Russian military officials suggest that their number may be increased (although, they claim, not with Russians). There are no indications that the Russians intend to honor Saakashvili’s request not to upgrade the quality of the Russian forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia or their equipment.
• Medvedev has also announced the intention to strengthen and modernize the Russian armed forces and to make volunteer military service more attractive. The Russian military has identified a number of areas in which it intends to make improvements following this conflict.

In the LA Times, Max Boot outlines a course of action:

The West must demand that Russia withdraw its troops from all of Georgia's soil, possibly to be replaced in South Ossetia and Abkhazia with international peacekeepers. If the Kremlin won't comply, the West should respond with sanctions such as withdrawing ambassadors from Moscow, kicking Russia out of the Group of 8 leading industrialized nations and freezing Russian bank accounts abroad

We should also do more to help Georgia defend itself. Sending American troops is out of the question, but we can send American equipment. That's what we did in 1973 when Israel appeared on the verge of losing the Yom Kippur War, and it is a favor we should extend to our embattled ally in the Caucasus. The greatest bang for the buck would come from two inexpensive hand-held missiles: the Stinger to destroy Russian aircraft and the Javelin to destroy tanks. Pictures of long columns of Russian vehicles advancing slowly down winding mountain roads indicate that a few well-placed missiles could wreak havoc with their operations.

See Fred Kagan's latest update on the situation in Georgia.

McCain tells a crowd in Pennsylvania:

My friends, today the killing goes on and aggression goes on. Yet, I know from speaking this morning to the President of Georgia, Misha Saakashvili, who I've known for many years, that he knows that the thoughts and the prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation as they struggle today for their freedom and independence. And he wanted me to say thank you to you, to give you his heartfelt thanks for the support of the American people for this tiny little democracy far away from the United States of America. And I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians

Jim Geraghty writes

At a rally in Tbilisi today, Georgians "roared" when their president, Mikhil Saakashvili, repeated John McCain's statement, "We are all Georgians today."

From the AFP:

Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus on Tuesday compared the situation in Georgia to the 1938 Munich crisis, when Western nations tried to appease Hitler's territorial demands before World War II.

"We can't allow a second Munich, when the international community climbed down to Hitler," he told Lithuanian public radio. "That led to World War II, to a huge tragedy and millions of victims."

Adamkus was traveling to Tbilisi Tuesday with his counterparts from ex- communist Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine, all of whom have sided with Georgia in the crisis.

A senior Lithuanian foreign ministry official used the same analogy in comments to AFP Tuesday.

Zygimantas Pavilionis said the West mustn't let Russia have its way in Georgia.

"We're afraid of setting a precedent. We could see a repeat of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia," he said, referring to the 1938 crisis when Nazi Germany occupied part of Czech territory on the grounds that it was populated by German- speakers.

Pavilionis also called on NATO to provide military aid to Georgia to stop what he called Russian "military aggression."

"Our friends have been subjected to military aggression, and we should use all the means we have to stop it," he said.