By Alyssa Rosenberg First off, huge thanks to Ezra for having me here, and to ya'll for reading. It's an honor. Now, on to the real stuff: Obviously it's really, really not good that Russia is marching into the breakaway republic of South Ossetia in Georgia. But for better or for worse, this incident, and whatever follows from it, seems to settle completely the question of whether President Dmitri Medvedev is exerting any power at all in Russia. Despite the fact that the Russian President is commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces, while the Prime Minister is supposed to act as a diplomatic representative abroad, it was Vladimir Putin who declared that "war has started," and it's not until the 13th paragraph of the Times story that the author notes that Medvedev's spokesman declined to comment on the invasion. I'm not a Russia expert by any means. But it seems to me that if Russia wants to send a message about how disruptive it a) can be and b) wants to be, Putin could hardly have chosen better timing. China's asking for a cease-fire out of respect for the opening of the Olympics, which Russia seems unlikely to grant. Russia is doing its best to play the UN like a cheap piano by calling an emergency session and tying negotiators up in a morass of discussions about the language of a statement. Putin gave only lip service to Russia's internal rules to keep himself in power. He's not going to play by anyone else's rules either.
