A year after the five-day war between Russia and Georgia transformed the region's geopolitical landscape, reports coming out of South Ossetia, the breakaway republic that Russia later recognized, are eerily similar.
News of shelling, artillery fire, and aggression on both sides are stoking tensions amid fears of a new conflict, even as Russia increases its efforts to rebuild Tskhinval, the Ossetian capital that Georgia attacked on August 7, 2008.
The war of words, meanwhile, is far from over - with Twitter, LiveJournal, and Facebook all suffering reported hack attacks late last week, apparently linked to the conflict.
President Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Vladikavkaz, across the border in North Ossetia, on the August 8 anniversary, and said that Russia would not reverse its recognition of South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who last year called Georgia's actions in South Ossetia "genocide," was even more pointed in his assessment of Saakashvili's actions. Putin told journalists in Sochi the Georgian regime could not be trusted.
"I personally urged them to be more patient, to garner trust and authority in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. What were their answers? ‘Yes, yes, we understand, and we will do that.' What did they do in practice? The exact opposite."
Georgian officials presented a report last week that reiterated Tbilisi's claim that Russian military convoys entered South Ossetia on Aug. 7. The report cited evidence presented to an EU commission that South Ossetia was preparing for military action in advance by evacuating officials and civilians.
Meanwhile, South Ossetia's president, Eduard Kokoity, dismissed his Cabinet last week and appointed a Russian construction mogul as prime minister, in an apparent signal that the authorities were struggling to make headway in reconstruction efforts. On a recent visit to South Ossetia, Medvedev criticized reconstruction efforts as slow and ineffectual. Russia pledged $620 million in reconstruction aid, but critics of Kokoity say that as much as half of that money has been lost.
The appointment of Vadim Brovtsev as prime minister was seen as a direct result of Medvedev's visit. The previous prime minister, Aslanbek Bulavtsev, was officially dismissed for health reasons, but according to sources in the South Ossetian government cited by Kommersant, he was removed because of numerous conflicts with Kokoity.
South Ossetian officials stressed their republic's reliance on Russian aid. "Without Russian aid, it would have been very difficult for South Ossetia to normalize," Dmitry Medoyev, the republic's ambassador to Russia, said.
While both the South Ossetians and Georgian reported attacks in the days leading up to the anniversary, none were independently verified.
Anatoly Nogovitsin, the deputy chief of Russia's General Staff, said that shipments of arms to Georgia were a sign that the country might be preparing for another military attack. US Assistant Secretary of Defence Alexander Vershbow has denied claims that the U.S. was supplying Georgia with arms, but the Russian Foreign Ministry insists that Georgia is still receiving U.S. military aid.
Russian officials differed, meanwhile, on the threat of a new conflict.
"The situation really is tense," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Andrei Nesterenko said in a statement on August 3. "The provocations of the Georgians ahead of the anniversary are continuous."
Nogovitsin, meanwhile, dismissed Georgia's military capability. "Currently Georgia isn't capable of putting together an armed force like last year in such a short period of time," RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.
The Georgian side puts its civilian casualties at 228, while 184 servicemen are said to be dead or missing. About 25,000 Georgians have been displaced from their homes in South Ossetia, Georgia says. Russia says that 162 South Ossetian civilians were killed and 255 were wounded, and 48 servicemen, including 10 peacekeepers, died in action.
A total of 5,143 South Ossetians were displaced from their homes, according to Russian government figures.
The conflict caused relations between Russia and the West to plummet to a new post-Cold War low, with military cooperation halted with NATO and the United States.
The war has also had an effect on former Soviet republics in dispute over other breakaway republics.
"We can say that a new status quo has formed in the Caucasus region" as a result of the war, said Sergei Markedonov, a regional security analyst at the Institute of Political and Military Analysis. "First of all, the old format of regulating conflict no longer exists. Second, the fact that unrecognized republics have become partially recognized seriously affects the North Caucasus and the post-Soviet space in general."
