The conflict in Georgia should by now have settled down. Normally diplomats would be shuttling from Moscow to Tbilisi putting in place a durable ceasefire, working on confidence-building measures and inserting a mechanism to prevent further violence and restore stability to the region.

But this time there is no United Nations Security Council resolution calling on both sides to stop and the world's top mediators are nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Georgia finds itself engaged in a war of attrition with Russia.

The country is divided down the middle by the permanent presence of Russian troops and there is every chance that another round of violence could erupt at any moment.

Reports from South Ossetia suggesting that Russia will eventually annex the breakaway enclave and establish permanent Russian military bases in the area come as no surprise.

From the moment Russian tanks poured into the region, the Kremlin made it clear that it intended to keep a military footprint deep inside Georgia.

Reports this week in The Times, now confirmed by human rights groups, suggest that the Russians and their Ossetian allies have been busy conducting ethnic cleansing of all Georgians from the so-called “buffer zone” created by Russian forces.

“Soon there will be no North or South Ossetia, there will be a united Alania as part of Russia,” said Tarzan Kokoity, the Deputy Speaker of the South Ossetian parliament. “We will live in one Russian state.”

The beleaguered Government in Georgia is largely helpless to fight back, but some support is on its way. It was no mistake that Washington chose to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia via US Navy warships in the Black Sea under the noses of their Russian counterparts. More US naval firepower is on its way and the Pentagon's next step could be rearming the Georgian military.

Next week Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, will pay the most high-level visit to Tbilisi by a US official as a demonstration of support for Mikheil Saakashvili, the beleaguered Georgian President. The Bush Administration's most hawkish figure will likely use the occasion to warn Russia to back away from confronting America's main ally in the region.

EU leaders are also meeting next week to agree a common response. The most likely outcome will be to offer Georgia more financial support. They will probably stop short of imposing sanctions against the Kremlin but could deliver an ultimatum to Russia about future behaviour.

Mr Saakashvili will not be be travelling to Brussels for the meeting. He fears, rightly, that if he leaves the country the Russians may take steps to prevent his return and overthrow his regime.

Georgia has become the new battleground for a protracted struggle between Russia and the West. There may be no “Iron Curtain” yet, but a new political fault line is being drawn across Georgia. The boundaries can even be seen from space, where satellites have photographed the swath of burning of Georgian villages marking the new de facto border with Russia. This conflict is far from over. It is just beginning.

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