MOSCOW - President George W. Bush's swing through the former Soviet Union highlighted Washington's rising profile in a part of the world long dominated by Moscow, but experts questioned whether the United States will match its potent rhetoric with practical deeds.
The US leader's trip, which began in Latvia, passed through Russia and culminated in a first-ever visit by a serving American president to Georgia, "definitively places the accent of American policy in the post-Soviet space," the respected Russian business daily Kommersant commented.
"George the Victorious" was how it summarized Bush's visit to the region, while another daily, Vremya Novostei, described the US president as a one-man "Revolution Export Service," an apparent reference to his support for a popular -- anti-Moscow -- revolt in Georgia in 2003.
"Bush is beyond a doubt the great winner of this revolution movement," said Sergei Markov, a political analyst who is close to the Kremlin policy-making establishment.
"We refer to him as the 'secretary of the local committee of the Washington Party'," the analyst joked, in a reference to the local organizational cells of the Soviet Communist Party that operated in every city, town and village of the Soviet Union.
He added: "For the moment, Russia has no strategy to oppose him. But we are preparing one."
Several Russian newspapers recalled that Bush, in an open-air speech to around 120,000 locals massed on a public square in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, had called on "all states" to respect the territorial integrity of the small Caucasus country that has been plagued by separatist strife.
In that speech, the US president held Georgia's "rose revolution" up as a model that had inspired other countries and Kommersant said he had made plain Washington's intention to continue supporting democratic change in the former Soviet Union "whether it displeased Russia or not."
Most analysts agreed that Bush's rhetoric and even his presence in countries until recently governed from the Kremlin was a source of chagrin to the current Russian leadership and most also agreed that this leadership was ultimately powerless to do anything about it.
"Russia has nothing with which to counter the growing influence of the United States and so uses anti-Western rhetoric at home to compensate its own loss of influence," explained Masha Lipman, an expert on Russian politics with the Moscow Carnegie Center.
Yuri Korgunyuk of the Indem foundation shared that view. "Russia will not react because it has nothing to fight back with. America is stronger than Russia, and the Russians know their limits very well."
Both Lipman and Korgunyuk however agreed that Washington's means and desire to influence developments in the former Soviet Union -- notably in following through on oblique pledges to help Georgia resolve conflicts with two separatist regions closely-tied to Russia -- were limited.
"Bush, who is already grappling with Iraq, has plenty to do besides going and getting bogged down in Abkhazia and South Ossetia," Korgunyuk said, referring to the two breakaway regions in Georgia that are tacitly supported by Russia.
Washington's real interest in Georgia was in its use as a transit area for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline delivering oil from the Caspian Sea to US markets and for airspace that provided a direct corridor between the West and Afghanistan, analysts said.
"In concrete terms, America's capacity to influence things is very limited," Lipman said, referring to Georgia's separatist conflicts.
Both regions fought and won wars against Georgian forces in the early 1990s and have enjoyed de facto independence since.
President Mikhail Saakashvili, with the verbal backing of the United States, has vowed to bring both regions back under the Georgian government's control, but for South Ossetia and Abkhazia "Russia remains the main partner."

05/11/2005 12:22 GMT