Europe and the United States must make clear to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev — and the real power player, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — that more aggression and lies will not be tolerated. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice must leave no doubt that there can be no military solution to the dispute with Russia.

It soon became clear that the six-point deal brokered by French President Nicholas Sarkozy had not only failed to slow the Russian advance, but had also allowed Russia to claim that it could push deeper into Georgia as part of so-called additional security measures it was granted in the agreement.

The entire Georgian column that was headed towards Gori has now turned around and headed back towards the Georgian capital Tbilisi. Whilst some Georgian soldiers have been armed and trained by the United States military they know they are no match for the superior Russian force.

A day after the truce was brokered by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, Russia faced mounting criticism in the West for its continuing military offensive in Georgia, and US President George W Bush demanded that Russian troops withdraw from the country.

There is a disturbing hollowness to much of our force. This reflects particularly badly on the Hawke and Keating governments, which left our defence forces bedraggled and grossly under-equipped, underfunded and undermanned, while proclaiming, wholly fatuously, that they had produced the defence of Australia.

Eyewitnesses say that they have seen a large number of Russian armoured personnel carriers entering Gori. Other witnesses from towns near Gori say Russian backed militias were going house to house seeking people out and killing them. However that has not been independently confirmed.

After five days of fighting, President Medvedev of Russia ordered his troops in South Ossetia to hold their fire and fixed a peace plan with President Sarkozy of France. In the United States, there was widespread dismay over the ease with which Moscow had imposed its will on a loyal US ally.

The Russian attacks have already managed to compromise several Georgian government web sites, prompting the government to switch to hosting locations to the U.S. Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has even taken the desperate step of moving to a Blogspot account in order to disseminate real-time information.

The decision by the Russian President was announced just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy was due to arrive in Moscow for talks aimed at ending the conflict in Georgia, centred on the Moscow-backed rebel region of South Ossetia.

Vladimir Putin has established a new tsarism. The Russian economy, due to the global resources boom, is itself booming. Putin’s Government is profoundly undemocratic, but it is strong. And the Russian people associate its strength with improved economic conditions at home and renewed respect abroad.