THE RUSSIAN ARMY, LIKE FISH, BEGINS TO SMELL AFTER THREE DAYS.

President Medvedev has agreed to leave Georgia, but the Army is taking its own sweet time:

Russian forces detained 21 Georgian soldiers in the Black Sea port of Poti on Tuesday. On a day when Russian troops continued to dig in to positions across Georgia, the detention of the troops -- who were bound and blindfolded -- was further evidence of continued military activity on Georgian territory by Russia despite assurances that its troops would withdraw. The Georgian soldiers were taken by the Russians to a military base at Senaki, along with five armored American Humvees that were due to be shipped back to the United States.

Like Gori, Poti is well within Georgian territory. Nevertheless, the Russian Army continues to occupy both cities under the argument that occupation is necessary to secure access to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia also appears to be deploying SS-21 tactical ballistic missiles to Georgia. These are battlefield weapons, but deployment in South Ossetia puts them well within range of Tbilisi. The deployment of the ballistic missiles might have something to do with the unsatisfactory performance of the Russian Air Force, which lost somewhere between six and nineteen aircraft during the war.

--Robert Farley