Many have seen in Georgia's rash decision the first consequence of Kosovo's unilateral independence from Serbia last February.
The move has encouraged the separatist claims of the South Ossetian and Abkhaz leaderships, and Georgia's renewed determination to fully regain its territorial sovereignty.
The leaders of the separatist regions trust that after Kosovo's independence, the consent of the sovereign state is no longer necessary if a greater power can guarantee its security.
Moreover they have deployed similar arguments to those applied in Kosovo: a past of ethnic-driven war which left thousands of civilians dead and countless displaced on both sides.
Unhappy with the U.S.-promoted Kosovo independence, Moscow had promised an adequate response to the latest violation in international law, and its first step came with the institutionalisation of ties with Georgia's two breakaway regions in March.
Unlike the West in Kosovo, Russia can claim the conflict in its southern regions directly affects its own security, and above all, that of a population of which 80 percent hold Russian passports.
Russian claims of arbitrary killings of up to 1,600 civilians by Georgian forces have not been independently verified, although a few Western journalists have started to take interest in testimonies by Ossetian refugees allegedly witness to human rights abuses by Georgian troops.
If the claims were to be at least partially verified and Russia was to show self-restraint and restore order, its ambition of a role as a legitimate world power and a regional pacifier could gain credibility.
A little more context can be found here.
Update: And more background on how the geopolitics of oil is implicated in the conflict here.
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