Russian President Dimitry Medevedev announced a cease fire in what was morning in the US, yet he is only Darth Vedar to the Emperor. The master kept his old Soviet KGB soul and now rules Russia in a way which best suits him - the power behind the throne. Russian bombs still fall on Georgia. Vlad the Invader lives today and rules from a Kremlin where evil had lay dormant for two decades. Vladimir Putin’s Red Army is still on the march after telling the world something entirely different.

Despite the televised order by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Russia launched an offensive Tuesday in Abkhazia, sending tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery toward the breakaway region.

Georgian troops were forced out of their last stronghold in the separatist province, said Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zaitsev, a defense official in Abkhazia. The claim that Georgian forces were gone could not immediately be confirmed.

And hours before the order to stop fighting, Russian jets bombed the crossroads city of Gori, near the separatist region of South Ossetia. Gori’s post office and university were burning Tuesday, but the city was all but deserted after most remaining residents and Georgian soldiers fled Monday ahead of a feared Russian onslaught.

The Jerusalem Post piece by the same title is chilling in its realistic applications.

This throwback to the heyday of the Soviet Union is more than symbolic. Historical analogies are never perfect, but our sense of déjà vu was acute as we watched Moscow’s Soviet-style move to reassert its domination of the USSR’s former fief.

Moscow perceives a threat to its strategic interests from a small regional actor. It prods its neighboring clients to commit such provocations that the adversary is drawn into military action that “legitimizes” a massive, direct intervention to “defend the victims of aggression.”

Vladimir Putin has proved to be a master spy and has shrewdly kept his true intentions from the world. President George W. Bush is famous to have said he “looked into Putin’s soul,” believing what has turned out to be the exact opposite. While commanding his own country with the iron fist of a Joseph Stalin, he’s co-opted the global design of Leonid Breznev

Steve Haragan is just reporting live from Tbilisi, Georgia that Russian jets are still hitting targets in the country’s capital. He confirms that Vladimir Putin is directing operations himself and that it is believed that Russian airborne troops will be deployed into the country. He also said that from the Russian ships will land additional troops into the country.

Putin spoke to President Bush yesterday about the Georgian operations. I wonder if he lied to the president about it. It looks bad that Bush is being pictured as having a good time at the Olympics while what is proving to be a chilling return of one time Soviet expansionism.

UPDATE: Diplomats arriving in Georgia today.

As what Russian President Dimitry Menvedev told President Bush became public, it may signal that the Russians are looking to get out of the conflict. Menvedev is quoted by a Kremlin spokesman to have told Bush the following:

In a telephone call with Mr Bush, Mr Medvedev “stressed that the only way out of the tragic crisis provoked by the Georgian leadership is a withdrawal by Tbilisi of its armed formations from the conflict zone,” a Kremlin statement said.

Apparently Bush informed Medvedev thats their military actions were disproportional:

“The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia. They mark a dangerous escalation in the crisis,” said Mr Bush, who is attending the Olympics in Beijing.

Vladimir Putin is reported to have returned from the Olympics to the area. Photographs have gone around the world that show civilian apartments that have been bombed in Gorgi which is outside the disputed territory.

I’m not sure if the Russians were prepared for the world media coverage of their massive aggression that a Fox News correspondant just confimed included Russian naval ships. Clearly this was planned well in advance by the Russians due to the presence of Russian armor and its navy. And it was timed to coincide with the beginning of the Olympics.

Media coverage in the US would be much greater this weekend had it not been for the revelations by John Edwards which confirmed his extramarrital affair.

The US-educated Georgian president has been quite public with his open desire for a cease-fire. The fact that the Russian president responded to the same could be indicating that they might want a way out.

The world will know Russian intentions if their planes continue to be seen over Georgia when the sun comes up there in a few short hours.

UPDATE: Writing in Pajamas Media, Roger Kimball believes that the Russians desire to reclaim all of Georgia.

When Russian tanks and troops poured into the separatist Georgian province of South Ossetia yesterday, it was not, as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, part of a “peacekeeping mission.” It was part of an imperialist mission whose undeclared goal is to reabsorb the whole of Georgia–West-leaning Georgia with its critical oil pipeline supplying energy to an increasingly thirsty Europe–into mother Russia.

Indeed, that pipeline is the unacknowledged key to the drama–unacknowledged, anyway, by the belligerents. As an AP story notes, the “U.S.-backed oil pipeline runs through Georgia, allowing the West to reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil while bypassing Russia and Iran.” A good thing for the West; but is such autonomy something Russia (or, for that matter, Iran) wants to encourage? Indeed, as I write, Reuters has issued an unconfirmed report that earlier today Russia attacked not only targets in South Ossetia but also targeted “the major Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline.”

UPDATE: Czech Republic Condemns Russian Federation. Offers to send peacekeeping units

UPDATE: EU to have emergency summit

UPDATE: McClatchy News Update just in.

Georgia, an US ally, was attacked by Russia today in military action over South Ossetia’s seperatist regime. The Vladimir Putin controlled Kremlin is back to its old ways:

Now the Kremlin is reacting strongly. Russian warplanes are reportedly striking targets in Georgia. Reinforcements are pouring in. And the Kremlin’s mighty propaganda machine is lumbering into action while a cyber-attack appears to have crippled Georgia’s websites.

For it is the information war, not what happens on the ground, that will determine the victor of this conflict. Russia is portraying Georgia as the aggressor, an intransigent and unpredictable country determined to restore its supremacy over an unwilling province by means of military force and “ethnic cleansing”. Such a country, clearly, would be unfit to receive Western support.

The propoganda campaign seems to have been working, but writing in Times Online, Edward Lucas says European fears for Georgia are misplaced:

These are misplaced: Georgia is not perfect, but it is not a dictatorship. Its leadership does not peddle a phoney ideology, such as the Kremlin’s mishmash of Soviet nostalgia and tsarist-era chauvinism. It has a thriving civil society, vocal opposition and ardently wants to be in the EU and Nato. Moral grounds alone would be enough reason for supporting it against Russian aggression.

This is not good news at all for US and western interests.

As things stand, Georgia will be fighting not to regain South Ossetia or even to deter aggression, but to survive. It is hard to see any good outcome. Georgia has failed to win a quick victory: crucially, it failed to block the Roki tunnel under the Caucasus mountains, normally used as a smugglers’ highway, but now the route for Russian heavy weapons that Georgia cannot counter for long. Worse, the authorities in Abkhazia, Georgia’s other breakaway region, may mount an attack, either on its own or with Russian help.

The fighting should be a deafening wake-up call to the West. Our fatal mistake was made at the Nato summit in Bucharest in April, when Georgia’s attempt to get a clear path to membership of the alliance was rebuffed. Mr Saakashvili warned us then that Russia would take advantage of any display of Western weakness or indecision. And it has.

The Soviets are back.

UPDATE Links:

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