This cannot be good for relations between Russia and Georgia. Highlands and I were just in Georgia a few weeks ago and it was a wonderful country with rugged mountains, wonderful people and a good government that is making many good steps (at least good as defined by Western governments, but this normative relativity varies in proportion to the square of your distance from Moscow). I fell in love with the country.
When we left the country to go to Azerbaijan (Which is another story entirely, that autocratic, authoritarian, repressive state took our Lonely Planet guidebook and in general I have very little good to say about Az, except that many of the non-government people we met were quite nice.) Russia "bombed" Georgia. The bomb was a dud that landed in some farmer's backyard about half-way between Tbilisi (the capital) and the border with Russia. There were a lot of odd things about that that I thought at the time but cannot currently remember. Nonetheless it was sketchy at best.
Saakashvili, Georgia's president, was supposed to meet with Putin in order to quell some of the tensions, (at least ostensibly) but I am not sure whether that happened or not. Whether it did or not seems immaterial to this inflaming further tensions between the two.
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