An editorial in London's Guardian newspaper writes that the war has seriously damaged Georgia and President Mikheil Saakashvili.

"The twin projects of the man who led the Rose Revolution were to reunite his country and bring it into the western orbit. Neither ambition is closer to being achieved. He has gambled the fate of his country and lost."

The Times of London says that the reputations of both countries suffered in the aftermath of the conflict: "The world was caught unprepared by the conflict. But it was one that both sides lost."

In the Financial Times Quentin Peel argues that Georgia has done better in the post-war period than Russia. Its economy has held up and foreign aid has been pumped in.

"Tbilisi appears to have lost the war, but it is winning the peace," he writes.

But there is now a case for improving democracy in Gerogia, state the authors of an opinion piece in the New York Times .

"Tbilisi went to war to regain its territorial integrity. The irony is that the only way it can accomplish this is to become truly democratic and economically strong enough to attract its two breakaway regions back to the fold," the two authors wrote.

And from the field, Telegraph correspondent Adrian Blomfield tracks down Georgian relatives of people killed in the war and in the Independent Shaun Walker writes from South Ossetia on the prospect of yet another war. Both journalists reported from the battlefield in South Ossetia during the war.

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Relatives grieve during a remembrance ceremony at the cemetery for Georgian soldiers killed during last year Georgia's war conflict with Russia over South Ossetia in Tbilisi August 7, 2009. REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili ...

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