European governments frequently accuse Russia of playing pipeline politics with its energy supplies, but a group of enterprising smugglers found a way to keep a different kind of liquid fuel flowing into Eastern Europe.

Estonian authorities recently discovered a two-kilometer underwater pipeline that was set up to pump cheap Russian vodka under a reservoir into Estonia where it could be sold at a markup without export tarrifs. The smugglers managed to pump 6,200 liters of the stuff under the border before they were shut down.

With this supply cut off, Western diplomats will, no doubt, soon be dispatched to strong-arm Caucasian states into an amibitious trans-Caspian project to pump Uzbek vodka into southern Europe.

VLADIMIR RODIONOV/AFP/Getty Images

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin's Latin American trip took an odd turn in Cuba earlier this week. After searching for ways that Moscow could help clean up the mess that Hurricanes Gustav and Ike left behind, the two countries had a more lofty goal to discuss: building a Cuban space center.

Yes, really. Though the details are unclear, Russia and its famed Cold War ally discussed the possibility of sharing technology to build Cuba's space program. Russia's Federal Space Agency issued a press release officially announcing the intent to collaborate this morning (sorry, it's in Russian).

Imagery of Cuba and Russia collaborating on anything that flies, of course, conjures up alarmingly unpleasant memories. Too bad the bargaining doesn't end there. After Havana, Sechin took off for Venezuela, where Russia is looking to close a deal to sell fighter jets and air defense systems to President Hugo Chávez after joint military exercises last week.

Just like the Cold War days, get used to Russia reaching for the stars.

ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images

I somehow missed this story about how Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov allegedly swore a blue streak in a recent phone conversation with David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, on the subject of South Ossetia.

According to the Telegraph, Lavrov berated his boyish British counterpart, asking at one point, "Who are you to f------ lecture me?" The Daily Mail has it as "Who the f--- are you to lecture me?" and quotes a Whitehall source saying, "It was effing this and effing that. It was not what you would call diplomatic language. It was rather shocking."

The Russian foreign minister vehemently denied the report and said he was quoting a European diplomat referring to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, according to Kommersant:

'F------ lunatic' were the words that Lavrov quoted in an attempt to convince his British counterpart that it had been Saakashvili that had started the war for South Ossetia.

Lavrov promised that a transcript of the conversation would be posted on the ministry's Web site, but it has yet to materialize.

ABC News has released excerpts of Sarah Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson, which airs in T-minus-22 minutes. Here's what the Republican vice presidential nominee has to say about Russia:

We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We've learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

The Washington Post reports today that domestic criticism of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is growing now that wartime freedom of speech restrictions have been lifted. But while a number of opposition figures are hoping to capitalize on the crisis that has weakened the president's political standing, all are wary of being associated with Russia's calls for Saakashvili's ouster.

For this reason, Putin and Medvedev's constant hurling of insults at Saakashvili seems counterproductive. The one thing Georgians of all political stripes seem to agree on is the need to resist Russian domination, and it will be hard for an opposition movement to gain momentum as long as it's suspected of having Russian backing. Saakashvili was using this to his advantage well before war broke out.

If Medvedev really wants to undermine Saakashvili, why doesn't he just invite him up to Sochi for the weekend?

TATYANA MAKEYEVA/AFP/Getty Images

Vladimir Putin may no longer be the president of sexy after all. The Russian magazine Sex & the City just released a ranking of Russia's hottest politicians and the shirtless-fishing, tiger-shooting prime minister is ranked... No. 2.

Adding insult to injury, Putin was pushed into second place by Boris Nemtsov (right), a former deputy prime minister and leader of the opposition party Union of Right Forces. Nemtsov's recent white paper on corruption under Putin was described by the Carnegie Endowment's Lilia Shevtsova as a "bomb, which anywhere but in Russia would cause the country to collapse."

Putin's loyal toadies in the Duma were quick to step forward and defend their fearless leader's staggering sexiness:

Sergei Markov, a United Russia deputy in the State Duma, said he was taken aback by the result.

"Putin is way better than Nemtsov," he said. "He's one of the sexiest politicians in the world." His looks may be average, he conceded, but his "decisive, harsh and unbending" character makes him extremely attractive.

This is probably not Markov's proudest day in public office.  

If Putin's feeling are hurt, he can take comfort in his number-one ranking on Vanity Fair's new "most influential" list and the fact that he's still way hotter than Dmitry Medvedev, number 7 on the Sex & the City list.

Reading off McCain's teleprompter, Mark Halperin releases this tidbit from tonight's speech:

“We will make it clear to Russia’s rulers that acts of violence and intimidation come at a heavy cost.”

It will be interesting to hear how specific he gets in describing that cost.

In a related point, it was strange to hear Rudy Giuliani say last night that Barack Obama's "first instinct" when the war broke out was to "create a moral equivalency" between Georgia and Russia by calling for both sides to show restraint.

Obama's initial statement on Georgia was nearly identical to those from the State Department and White House. He also mentioned the need to "truly stand up for Georgia" during his convention speech and spoke with Mikheil Saakashvili on the phone yesterday. He certainly hasn't been as outspoken in support of Georgia as McCain, but Giuliani's statement was plain dishonest.

When FP spoke with analyst Paul Goble last week about the conflict in Georgia, he made the following interesting point:

I believe that one of the reasons the fighting stopped was not because there weren't people in the defense ministry who thought it should go on for a bit longer, but because in the first two working days of the war, there was a total of some $8 billion net capital outflow from Russia. You're talking about serious consequences for wealthy Russians [...] Polls tell us that for many Russians, the single most important right they acquired after 1991 was the right to travel. If getting a visa becomes more difficult, Russians are going to have a harder time moving about. It's going to be harder to get their children into elite international schools. There's going to be less money around. So, there's probably a constituency, and a pretty large one among an influential group of people, who are going to go to the Russian government and say, "You're hitting us where it matters most: in our pocketbooks." And that's a source of influence that should not be discounted at all.

Today, Andrei Piontkovsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow reads some tea leaves in the Kremlin and warns of the opposite effect: that hardline nationalists could be the ones who gain the upper hand.

Piontkovsky sees a split between "global and national kleptocrats." For now, he puts President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the global camp with Goble's wealthy Russians, and agrees that the two men restrained generals who were eager to roll the tanks into Tbilisi.

But the national kleptocrats, who "seem to believe that they can live without overseas assets, or without educating their children and maintaining residences in the West," present a growing threat, Piontkovsky argues. "They are content to own properties in elite residential areas around Moscow and in Russia, such as Rublyovka, Valday, and Krasnaya Polyana," and care little for the fruits of globalization.

While no one yet knows the national plutocrats' names, I believe that they are new, influential players in or associated with the Kremlin, and that they have now become bold enough to challenge both Putin and Medvedev. Russia's military chiefs, for whom it is psychologically difficult to be ordered by politicians to abruptly end a large-scale and successful military operation, are their natural allies.

I cannot predict who will win this growing confrontation. But even if the global kleptocrats sustain their more "moderate" position on Georgia, theirs could be a Pyrrhic victory. Every day and every hour, by means of their own propaganda, these globally minded kleptocrats, are setting the path to power for the nationalists.

Piontkovsky ends with an ominous premonition:

Putin once said that "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century was the fall of the Soviet Union." The national kleptocrats may soon start calling for its reversal, and they are in an increasingly strong position to do so.

That was quick.

Only three days after Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia, officials from the disputed territory now say they plan to become part of Russia in the near future:

Soon there will be no North or South Ossetia — there will be a united Alania as part of Russia," [Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Tarzan] Kokoiti said, using another name for Ossetia.

"We will live in one united Russian state," he said.

Only this morning, the New York Times ran a feature on Ossetian nationalists imagining a future as the Andorra or Liechtenstein of the Caucasus. Oh well.

FILE; TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images

Dmitry Medvedev may have hoped the Shanghai Cooperation Organization would evolve from a loose security bloc into an anti-NATO counterweight, but so far things don't look like they're going in the Russian president's favor. 

On Thursday, Medvedev asked the group, which also includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to back Russia's response to Georgian "aggression." Instead, while the group welcomed "Russia's active role in contributing to peace and co-operation in the region," it condemned the use of force and reaffirmed its support for the sovereignty of the countries involved:

The SCO states express grave concern in connection with the recent tensions around the South Ossetian issue and urge the sides to solve existing problems peacefully, through dialogue, and to make efforts facilitating reconciliation and talks," their statement said.

That China and the others spoke of respecting territorial integrity should come as no surprise. From its relations with Sudan abroad to its concerns with seperatists in Tibet and Xinjiang at home, China has long expressed a policy of non-intervention.

Russia, too, was often a strong opponent of Western interventions -- in Iraq and Kosovo, among others -- which makes its military action in Georgia all the more galling. Its Asian allies, though, haven't jumped on board. That, at the very least, should be a comforting sign for the West amid cries of a new Cold War.

For more on how Russia's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia may backfire, check out FP's interview with regional expert and CIA veteran Paul Goble.

Mikheil Saakashvili on why Georgia didn't launch an insurgency against Russia, à la Chechnya:

Eventually we would have chased them away, but we would have had to go to the mountains and grow beards. That would have been a tremendous national philosophical and emotional burden."

It seems increasingly clear that Russian troops are not, in fact, pulling all the way out of Georgia:

Russian units said they had orders only to fall back as far as South Ossetia and some platoons were still dug in near roads outside Gori, while Russian troops bearing new peacekeeping badges dominated the main east-west highway, a key trading artery. A senior Russian official said Russian military checkpoints ringing South Ossetia would be permanent.

Moreover, it seems the Russian high command hasn't put much thought into the whole public diplomacy thing. Here are two more shots of Russian peacekeepers flipping Getty photographer Uriel Sinai the bird:

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images

All the bluster of a "new Cold War" of late has been a bit much for my tastes. Recent developments in the Middle East, however, have been hard to ignore:

As Syria renews its Soviet-era close ties with Moscow, many here fear that the Middle East could once again become a theatre for the two great powers to exert their spheres of influence, militarily and politically, in the volatile region.

As Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visits Russia today seeking deals for new missile systems, he's been dutifully trumpeting the Kremlin's party line on Georgia. He accused the West of "total disinformation, distorting facts and attempts at international isolation" (and he would know a bit about international isolation) but also took aim at Israel's alleged role in the conflict in the Caucasus:

Moreover, the West and Israel continue to put pressure on Russia. ... I think that in Russia and in the world everyone is now aware of Israel's role and its military consultants in the Georgian crisis.

(Israel says its government does not sell arms to other countries but its private firms are free to do so.)

In the wake of recent indirect talks between Israel and Syria, it would be a shame for Russia's resurgance to ruin any potential progress. As an editorial in The Asia Times notes, the very same neoconservatives who want to escalate the showdown with Russia may be harming their interest in the security of Israel at the same time.

NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images

There's some interesting Kremlinology (or Moscvology as Blake might have us call it) from Anna Smolchenko in today's Moscow Times. She notes that Dmitry Medvedev's bellicose comments in North Ossetia yesterday -- vowing a "crushing response" to future attacks on Russian citizens and referring to Georgia's leaders as genocidal morons are sharply at odds with the more conciliatory rhetoric he has used in the past. Smolchenko suggests that the president may be getting tough in an effort to reassert his own relevance.

This seems plausible to me. Last Tuesday I noted that it was Medvedev who declared a ceasefire while Vladimir Putin had been the one who effectively started the war. This seemed to be evidence of a good-cop-bad-cop approach from the tandem. But Russia's continued operations in Georgia this past week while Medvedev has repeatedly assured the world that a withdrawal was taking place have only helped confirm what most already suspected: that Medvedev is a glorified PR guy with no power over a state still run by Putin.

Condoleeza Rice seemed to be not-so-subtly hinting at this over the weekend:

The word of the Russian president needs to be upheld by his forces or people are going to begin to wonder if Russia can be trusted."

Members of the foreign press were barred from attending any of the events on Medvedev's trip to the Caucasus which could suggest that the president -- known to read several foreign newspapers every day on the Internet -- isn't happy with how he's being portrayed in the international media.

He might be calculating that if he can't actually influence the policy set by hawks like Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he might as well just out-hawk them at the podium.