Georgia votes

VOTERS in Georgia went to the polls in local elections yesterday in the first ballot since President Mikhail Saakashvili led the country into a disastrous war with neighbouring Russia nearly two years ago.

Saakashvili’s rule has elevated Georgia’s status in the West yet turned it into a bitter adversary of Russia.

The brief 2008 war, which Georgia lost, allowed Moscow to consolidate control over two breakaway regions in Georgia – South Ossetia and Abkhazia – and produced an influx of thousands of refugees whose homes were destroyed.