The Moment: Georgia

Attack
A Russian APC rides past a Georgian house, set on fire by South Ossetian militia, as it burns in the Georgian village of Kvemo-Achebeti.

Yuri Kozyrev / Noor for Time

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Reluctantly, almost insolently, on Aug. 16, Russia said it would withdraw its tanks and troops from the parts of Georgia it had overrun so swiftly just a few days before. Under the cease-fire agreement, Russian columns are expected to pull back behind preconflict lines of control. But amid reports of further incursions into Georgia, Russia is taking its own sweet time in complying. With tanks still rumbling along roads lined with ruins, the status quo in this part of the Caucasus is gone for good, crushed by the force of arms.

The human and physical damage is daunting enough. Hundreds of people have been killed, villages razed, bridges buckled and blown up, railways cut. Days after the cease-fire was agreed, the Russian army was still destroying military and civilian targets; the Georgian government accused it of inexplicably setting fire to vast tracts of woodland. In South Ossetia, the looting and deliberate destruction of ethnic Georgian villages mean that the two populations — Georgian and Ossetian — will not any time soon live side by side, as they had for centuries.

The political impact of the fighting is far-reaching. Russia has vowed that its troops will continue to occupy slices of Georgian territory even after its supposed withdrawal, acting as "peacekeepers" in the self-styled autonomous regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia can "forget about" its territorial integrity, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

In the aftermath of the war, some talked predictably tough. NATO promised there would be "no business as usual" with Moscow. "Georgia's infrastructure will be rebuilt," said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "Russia's reputation, that's another matter." But for all the bluster, some old questions naggingly asked themselves. When will politicians learn that if they promise to protect someone, they better mean it — or not make the promise? How far, precisely, from its present borders does Russia think that its vital national interests extend? And how in the years to come will an energy-anxious West live with an energy-rich Russia?

Answers came there none.