Russia has, for the moment, more or less ended its assault on Georgia. Diplomacy, led by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French and current European Union president, has entered the arena to try to separate and reconcile the combatants, But Vladimir Putin, re-emerging as Russia’s real leader over the past week, has achieved nearly all of Moscow’s war aims, in the face of a feeble western response. Russia looks in no mood to negotiate anything. This is going to be a difficult crisis to manage.

Russia has seized full control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two separatist enclaves it sponsors on Georgian territory. It has damaged and humiliated the US and Israeli-trained Georgian army, and re-established its writ in the Caucasus. The likelihood of Nato now embracing Georgia and Ukraine – and committing to defend them – has receded, despite Tuesday’s assertion by Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, its general secretary, that the alliance’s pledge to admit them eventually still stands.