Deep Background On This Wk.'s War

From Slate several mos. ago., a piece from where the action is now:

In May 2008, Joshua Kucera said South Ossetia is "perhaps the closest you can get today to experiencing the old Soviet Union, as well as a good place to get the flavor of a good old-fashioned, Cold-War-style proxy war between the United States and Russia." His dispatch from Tskhinvali is reprinted here.