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Reportedly one of the hopes of the European Union for the Tagliavini Commission and its report was that it would encourage a genuine debate in Georgia about the events of the August War and so help set the state on a more stable path towards peace and reconciliation with the Ossetians and Abkhaz.

If that was really the view it reflected the deep seated naivety in some parts of the Europe about the real nature of Mikheil Saakashvili's government and its willingness to allow genuine debate. Europe has spent six years now telling Saakashvili that he needs to do a better job on democratisation and media freedom in private and then offering excuses for him in public. At times some of the statements by senior EU officials have bordered on the delusional - such as talking of Georgia's "genuine progress" on democratic reform - and so this misjudgement over Tagliavini's internal impact seems entirely believable.

Georgia is not Russia. Journalists who ask inconvenient questions are not gunned down in the street or thrown off high buildings in crudely faked "suicides". But the Georgian state still has a near-complete grip on the three media channels that matter: the national TV stations. They obtained that control by force when they stormed Imedi and now they have it they clearly have no intention of surrendering it but nor have they any real need to return to force: the job is done.

Outside Georgia it has been a different story. Despite a mini-fightback through the medium of Ronald Asmus and his new book on the August War, there are few in the west who now do not see Saakashvili's misjudement and erratic behaviour as major contributions to the start of the military conflict.

At a personal level Saakashvili plainly finds that very difficult to deal with. This week, in Estonia (another foreign country he chose to visit before Kutaisi), he he has gone into overdrive with promoting what is little better than a conspiracy theory to explain his loss of credibility in western capitals. His extraordinary lecture on the subject will likely backfire as it will only confirm the view in the west that he lacks perspective and judgement and seems unable to learn from past mistakes.

His repeated predictions of the inevitability of a new war with Russia will also chill western hearts who now finds themselves propping up a president against the threat of Russian overthrow when that president seems at the same time determined to provoke the very act that will guarantee such an overthrow.

Saakashvili's response to every western warning and rebuff - it has got so bad that even the Estonians, with the Poles the president's least critical supporters, have had to ask him to cool it this week - has been to ramp up his rhetoric yet further. He seems unable or unwilling to grasp that the west can take a view of the conflict in which blame between Russia and Georgia is shared and that not simply all dumped on one head or the other.

Panarama: Portrait of Mikheil Saakashvili from Ivan Panarama on Vimeo.

This process now seems to have reached its apogee in an extraordinary interview Saakashvili has given Ivan Panarama (see video). Once again he compares Russia with Nazi Germany. But he goes further: implicitly comparing Heidi Tagliavini to Neville Chamberlain and stating there were 120,000 Russian troops in South Ossetia when Georgian forces attacked.

In fact this is the Tagliavini Commission's narrative of the military events of August 2008:

Tagliavini (Click here to read)