The warning to Abkhazia is the latest in a series since the signing of the Russian-Georgian military and political agreements last month. Tbilisi has since appeared to think, and the Abkhaz have certainly come to fear, that Russia would condone or even assist a Georgian military operation to reincorporate Abkhazia. Moscow´s conduct has not confirmed either assumption, and Georgia in any case has no real military. Georgia´s weak hand also shows in Russia´s sheltering of Georgadze and in Shevardnadze´s painful climbdown on this issue, after having turned it into an acid test of Georgian-Russian relations and of his personal relations with Moscow.

Russian Soldiers Attacked in Tajikistan.