Even as Russia pulls back troops from Georgia two weeks after fighting erupted between the countries, tensions remain high in the region. Russia has stationed peacekeepers and checkpoints near the border of the separatist region of South Ossetia, and Western leaders say Russia is still failing to comply with the French-brokered cease-fire.

Gail Lapidus, a senior fellow emerita at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has been tracking the events leading to the conflict in Georgia. A specialist on Soviet society, politics and foreign policy, she has written and edited a number of books on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs, including The New Russia: Troubled Transformation.

In an interview with Stanford Report, Lapidus discussed the buildup to the crisis, its toll on the region and the role of the United States.

Q: What were the key factors that led to the conflict?

A: The immediate trigger was the Georgian attack on the separatist region of Southern Ossetia, following escalating provocations. But the conflict has deeper roots and a longer history. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union and the conflicts that broke out in the early 1990s, the Russian government has provided political and military backing to separatist governments in Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia and has stood in the way of a peaceful resolution of these conflicts.

But there is no deep-rooted historic hostility between Georgians and Ossetians. There are more Ossetians living inside the rest of Georgia than there are in South Ossetia. Ossetians serve in the Georgian government, and until they were forced out during the recent hostilities roughly one-third of the population of South Ossetia was Georgian. So there has long been an intermixing and intermarriage between the two groups.

Q: Russia was opposed to Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia earlier this year and has said that move set the stage for Moscow to recognize the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Is Russia making a legitimate claim?

A: The analogy has no real historical merit. When the Milosevic government launched a deliberate policy of massive ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians, the West intervened to halt the forced exodus and enable a large number of Kosovar Albanians to return to their homes. A multinational NATO contingent remained in Kosovo to prevent further violence and protect the remaining Serb population there. Over a period of years, the U.N. actively sought to resolve Kosovo's status. A special U.N. envoy, the distinguished Finnish diplomat Martii Ahtisaari, tried to fashion a compromise after lengthy consultations with both sides, and drafted a proposal for "conditional independence" for Kosovo with extensive EU supervision and guarantees for the rights of the Serbian minority population. But when that solution, which was accepted by the Kosovo government, was rejected by Belgrade as well as Moscow, it was clear that an impasse had been reached, and only then did the Kosovo government declare its independence.

There is a huge difference between a set of arrangements that resulted from protracted international discussions and mediation and a Western presence that aimed at achieving stability and reconciliation between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs, and the unilateral Russian military intervention in support of ethnic cleansing of Georgians, severing the territory's ties to Georgia and encouraging the absorption of this region into the Russian Federation.

Q: Reports of ethnic killings have been coming from both sides since the conflict began. How credible are those claims?

A: At this point it's very difficult to assess the situation, in part because the Russian military has barred outside observers from entering the territory of Southern Ossetia. Preliminary investigations by intrepid Russian journalists and others have called into question the initial claims from the Russian and South Ossetian authorities of massive casualties and ethnic cleansing, and assert those figures were inflated, with casualties closer to 200 and most of them military and not civilian.

On the Georgian side, the situation at this point is chaotic, with large numbers of refugees both from South Ossetia and from Georgian towns that have been shelled and occupied by Russian forces moving to safety and often without any idea of whether other family members have survived. Without electricity to power cell phones, and absent other forms of communication, the scale of the displacement cannot yet be measured.

Q: How do you expect borders to be re-drawn in the region?

A: It is difficult to predict the long-term result because it largely depends on Russian ambitions in the region. At a minimum, Russia is likely to take additional steps to detach both Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, and over the longer term will probably attempt to integrate those regions into Russia itself.

Some observers have suggested that Russia's goals are more far-reaching still: to bring down the Georgian government altogether and substitute a more pliable leadership more friendly to Moscow, or indeed to undermine the very cohesion and integrity of the country by shattering its infrastructure, disrupting its communications, and establishing military outposts in close proximity to major cities.

Q: How likely is Russia to directly target the Georgian government?

A: Russian actions appear intended to accomplish this goal indirectly, creating chaotic conditions around Georgia that undermine the government's effective control over important parts of the country and seeking to stimulate hostility and resentment that might allow the Georgians themselves to bring down their government.

Q: What role has the United States played in the buildup to the conflict?

A: Georgia is a tragic demonstration of the catastrophic foreign policy of the current administration, which has lost all credibility because of the chasm between its verbal assurances of support for Georgia and its failure to act on those assurances by actions that might have prevented the crisis. While massive American resources and energies were focused on Iraq, the mounting tensions in this region were largely ignored, and the opportunities for constructive engagement over many years were lost.

Q: How is this crisis likely to affect America's relationship with Russia?

A: This is a watershed moment for the relationship between Russia and the United States. It is likely to compel a fundamental reassessment about the direction in which Russia is headed and the kinds of threats it might pose in the future, as well as of the U.S. and Western stake in this relationship. It is also likely to elicit a major discussion of the role and future of NATO in an altered European security environment.

Q: How are other countries in the region reacting to the situation?

A: Events in Georgia are already reverberating across the region. The Baltic states have been seeking reassurance about their own security, and Poland has already moved to strengthen its relationship with the United States. Azerbaijan has interests that are threatened by the Russian military attack on the main Georgian Black Sea port city of Poti, which is a major transshipment site for Azerbaijan, and by the Russian attacks on the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, which is the only pipeline carrying Caspian energy and gas to Europe without crossing Russian territory. But it is Ukraine that is most directly threatened by these events because of Russian claims surrounding Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and Black Sea port of Sebastopol, and the fear that the Russian leadership is moving to establish a powerful zone not only of political but also of economic and military influence over the entire post-Soviet space.