By comparison, Saakashvili's target audience was public opinion in the countries that were ostensibly his allies: the U.S., other parts of the former Soviet empire and Western European countries that he sharply criticized as feckless in their defense of Georgia's democracy.
That message of a small democracy under threat was the heart of a massive rally in the central square of Tbilisi on Aug. 12. The images of about 150,000 Georgians packed into the square, gigantic flags undulating in the summer air backed by a crescendo of patriotic music, conjured memories of the peaceful democratic revolutions that helped free neighbors like Ukraine and Poland from the Soviet grip.
For extra effect, Saakashvili invited the leaders of those two countries, as well as of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, to join him onstage in Tbilisi and frame him in the TV shots.
It seemed to work. Polish President Lech Kaczynski returned to Warsaw to gush over how the demonstration reminded him of the glory days of Solidarity, the labor movement credited with bringing down Poland's communist leaders.
"I thought about my youth, about my speeches in the '80s, the Solidarity rallies," Kaczynski told the conservative Polish daily Rzeczpospolita. "I felt like that again, the best times of my life."
Press coverage in Poland, and in much of Europe, has been generally sympathetic to Georgia. Over the weekend, several newspapers in Warsaw, whether by coincidence or design, followed their reports on Georgia with features on the 40th anniversary of the Soviet repression of a reform movement in what was then Czechoslovakia, and on Hitler's ferocious occupation of Poland.
"It was very important for Saakashvili and for Georgia that those pictures went around the world," said Aleksander Szczyglo, a leading member of Kaczynski's right-wing Law and Justice Party and former defense minister.
By comparison, Moscow has kept a tight clamp on media coverage of the conflict, an easy feat thanks to the crackdown on independent media that took place under the rule of Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister and former president.
Russia's bombardment of Georgia, and the flow of troops and tanks over the border, has been cast as a victorious intervention that saved South Ossetians from slaughter at the hands of Georgian soldiers. The continuing presence of Russian soldiers on Georgian turf is described as a necessary security measure.
