1,625 Georgian military servicemen are taking part in a large-scale international military training, alongside US forces, known as Immediate Response at the site of the fourth infantry brigade of Vaziani base.

Officials from Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova are in the Georgian city of Batumi for the first day of the two-day GUAM summit.

Days before the NATO summit in Bucharest began, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili rolled out a new peace initiative for breakaway Abkhazia.

Setting aside growing tension on a number of issues, Putin and Bush appeared eager to end their presidential relationship on a high note.

Speaking today at NATO's summit in Bucharest, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance wants to welcome Ukraine and Georgia as members someday.

Davit Bakradze, the Georgian foreign minister: “As a result of an agreement between the presidents, [direct] air traffic will be resumed between Russia and Georgia in the nearest future, it is expected that flights will resume from the second half of March.”

The ink has hardly dried on Kosovo's independence declaration.  And already, reactions are flowing from frozen conflict zones in the former Soviet Union as if on cue.

The foreign policy priorities of the presidential candidates. Most put Euro-Atlantic and NATO integration front and center, but good relations with Russia is, for some, another major consideration.

As anniversaries of the events in Georgia and Ukraine approach, high hopes and great expectations have been replaced with apprehension.

Georgia says it will move to formally ask Russian peacekeepers to leave the breakaway region of Abkhazia following reports that they seized and beat five Georgian police officers.

Interview with Jaroslaw Walesa, the member of parliament of Poland.

VLADIMIR CHIZHOV

The outcome of the extraordinary EU summit held on September 1 in Brussels was more or less predictable, both in terms of the views expressed by the EU member states and in terms of the EU Presidency conclusion.

ALEKSANDR RAHR

Yesterday I could say that in Europe there were differences in relation to Russia’s actions in South Ossetia. Some countries blamed Georgia for the conflict, others blamed Russia. But at present there is a different tendency.

ANDREY MAKARYCHEV

South Ossetia and Georgia have been at war with each other since last week. The towns and cities came under fire, the reservists were mobilized. There are the killed and the wounded, and a lot of refugees.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

The guns are bellowing now in South Ossetia and Georgia, and muses of those who might mull over the solution of the grave crisis, are still silent. Many things including the people’s lives depend on how long the diplomats and policy-makers will be inactive.

VITALY PORTNIKOV

The holding of “Sea Breeze” military exercises and Ukraine’s joining NATO should be regarded as two different processes. Some people want to unite them, but Kyiv has not applied for the NATO membership yet. Ukraine has not received the NATO Membership Action Plan and, apparently, will not recieve it in December.

SERGEI BAGAPSH

What will Abkhazia do, if Georgia joins NATO? Abkhazia will do nothing. Let Georgia join NATO even tomorrow. We do not care about that.

EROSI KITSMARISHVILI

Currently, there are several negative points in the Russian-Georgian relations. The first one is Georgia’s bid for the NATO membership, the second one is Tbilisi’s conflict with the breakaway territories – Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There are also the problems of the bilateral relations.

TEMUR IAKOBASHVILI

It is impossible to settle the conflicts, on which I am working, without Russia’s participation, especially today when the situation has become so strained that the so-called "frozen conflicts" have got "unfrozen".

KONSTANTIN GABASHVILI

We do not want to be at war with anybody. We want to normalize the situation, start negotiating with Russia and other countries to put an end to the conflict.

VALERY KENYAIKIN

The parliamentary elections will be held in Georgia soon. That’s why an “external enemy” is being looked for to mobilize the country’s public opinion.

ALEXANDER KRYLOV, ALEKSEY MALASHENKO, ANATOLY OTYRBA, SERGEI MARKEDONOV, SHALVA PICHKHADZE, ZURAB ABASHIDZE, IVLIAN KHAINDRAVA

"For the first time the President of Georgia has put forward such far-reaching proposals," Alexander Krylov.

KONSTANTIN ZATULIN, ALEXANDER KONOVALOV, TATYANA PARKHALINA, OLES DONIY, LEONID KOZHARA, IVAN ZAETS, ANDREW KUCHINS

"Why do the Central and Eastern European countries seek to join NATO? For many of them it is a way to join the EU. Many countries took this as institutionalization of independence from Moscow. For many countries it was a way to return to Europe," Tatyana Parkhalina.

STEPHEN BLANK

In advance of NATO’s Bucharest summit Russia has decided to employ the traditional Soviet tactics of intimidation and blackmail to block NATO’s enlargement.

GEORGETA POURCHOT

The Bucharest NATO summit offers a significant possibility that NATO’s and Russia’s positions on a variety of issues will further diverge, marking the beginning of the end of this uneven relationship.

GEORGETA POURCHOT

Eurasian Home website with a kind permission of the Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., publishes the first chapter "Sovereignity from Within" of the book "Eurasia Rising: Democracy and Independence in the Post-Soviet Space" by the Eurasian Home website contributor Georgeta Pourchot.

ALEKSANDR RAHR

All the CIS leaders arrived in Moscow on Friday to participate in the informal summit. This indicates their respect for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin who steps down in spring. Unlike ex-President Boris Yeltsin, Putin did his best to create the working atmosphere within the CIS. Much was done in the sphere of the economic integration.

GIGA BOKERIA

No democratic Georgian government will ever agree with Abkhazia’s independence, because in this territory a few people with the assistance of the large neighboring state and the military aggressively hoisted the flag of ethnic nationalism.

SERGEI ROGOV

Unfortunately, I have to state that the strategic partnership between Moscow and Washington has failed. The partnership exists in words only. And there are several reasons for that.

ARCHIL GEGESHIDZE

After the Russian ambassador Vyacheslav Kovalenko had come back to Georgia early in this year, hope emerged that the relations between the two countries would improve. But little change followed the ambassador’s coming back.

MERAB PACHULIA

Ambitions of the Georgian authorities to develop cooperation with NATO are largely supported by the population. There is a consensus on the benefits that the country could receive after acquiring membership of the Alliance, though contradictions remain.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

Members of the “National Forum” and some other opposition parties fear that Georgia may join NATO without Abkhazia and South Ossetia, thus losing those territories for good.

GHIA NODIA

Abkhazia, an unrecognized republic of Georgia, held December 6 a “national gathering” to express its will to gain independence.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

Tbilisi intends to show Moscow and the whole international community that the Saakashvili Administration is eager to restart the two countries’ dialogue.

MERAB PACHULIA

Under the current circumstances there seems to be no compromise between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway regions.

SERGEI MARKEDONOV

The Georgian minister on conflict settlement, Giorgi Khaindrava, called the recent meeting between the leaders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia a "statehood game." While Georgian officials continue to describe political developments in the breakaway republics in this way, Abkhazia is taking a number of very important political steps that may give its cause a boost.

TATYANA STANOVAYA

The treatment of leaders ousted in the recent "color revolutions" in some CIS states is directly related to the way in which power was seized. Kyrgyzstan has meted out the most brutal treatment, followed by Ukraine and Georgia.

SERGEI MARKEDONOV

Russia's relations with Georgia are one of the most cute and problematic aspects of foreign policy in the Caucasus. Previously "fraternal," i.e. former Soviet republic, Georgia has become one of Moscow's most intractable partners in the former Soviet space.

Eurasian Home website with a kind permission of the Greenwood Publishing Group Inc. publishes the first chapter "Sovereignity from Within" of the book "Eurasia Rising: Democracy and Independence in the Post-Soviet Space" by the Eurasian Home contributor Georgeta Pourchot.

The typical criticism of the UK’s Foreign Office is the one eloquently expressed in John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener - that they are pitiless practitioners of real-politik who care more about stability than idealism, and who only really work to protect the interests of British corporations, rather than British values. But on Russia, the Foreign Office seems to have erred on the other side.

Georgia has resolutely condemned Russia’s actions in Chechnya. Russia has severely criticized NATO actions towards Serbia. Later on the Georgian authorities tried to do the same thing in South Ossetia as the Russian authorities had done in Chechnya. Moscow decided to treat Georgia in the same way as NATO had treated Serbia.

The Russian foreign policy boringly runs around in circles: the row with Estonia on the historic past, the squabbles between Moscow and Kyiv over the Crimea and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the confrontation with Georgia because of its breakaway republics etc. After having made a full circle we are back to square one - another conflict with Georgia.

The Georgian government has apparently been offering olive branches to the Russian government over the last two weeks, with the demotion of hawkish defence minister Irakli Okruashvili to the ministry of economy (he’s since resigned).