The Telegraph reports:

The Kremlin is guilty of committing an act of war against Georgia, according to a United Nations report.

The inquiry, released [last] Monday, concluded that Russia shot down a Georgian reconnaissance aircraft as it flew over Georgia last month. The report gives the first independent backing to claims made by Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's president, that Russia was responsible for a series of aggressive acts that have brought the two former Soviet neighbours close to war.

Georgia has accused Russia of firing missiles into its territory in the past, but UN observers have never found enough evidence to blame Moscow categorically. But this time the UN team's conclusions were unequivocal.

Radar records, witness testimony and video from the unmanned drone showed that it had been shot down by a Russian missile fired from a Russian fighter jet. In the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, "this leads to the conclusion that the aircraft belongs to the Russian airforce," the report said.

While Russia continued to deny the incident – at least the third of its kind in the last two months – Georgia said it was evidence that Moscow was giving military backing to rebels in Abkhazia, a territory that broke with Georgia in the early 1990s. "Georgia today is in a very difficult situation because foreign-armed forces have entered its territory," Mr Saakashvili said. "The UN has released a report in which Russia is directly accused of aggression against Georgia. For the first time, the UN has directly pointed the finger at Russia."

The UN said Russia's act was a breach of a 1993 ceasefire that ended a civil war in Abkhazia, but it also criticised Georgia for sending drones into Abkhaz airspace – while reiterating that the rebel province remained part of Georgian territory.

Watch the video here.

Writing in the Moscow Times Ron Asmus, executive director of the Transatlantic center of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels and Mark Leonard, executive director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, call upon the West to stand up to Russian aggression in Georgia in order to prevent war, pointing out that Russian "peacekeepers" are in fact responsible for provoking that war.

The West could be sleepwalking into a war on the European continent. Georgia, which burst into view with a moving display of democratic ambition during the Rose Revolution of 2003, is teetering on the brink of war with Russia over the separatist Georgian enclave of Abkhazia. The outcome of this crisis -- involving a fledgling democracy with aspirations to join NATO and the European Union -- will help determine the rules of the post-Cold War security system. But Western diplomats are not sending strong enough signals to either side.

Moscow seems determined to provoke Tbilisi to take military action that would discredit Georgia in Western eyes and kill the country's aspirations to join NATO. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin used the West's recognition of Kosovo as a pretext to strengthen his own country's links with the breakaway republic. One of his last acts as president was to establish "direct official relations" with Abkhaz quasi-state bodies, a move just short of outright diplomatic recognition. In early May, Moscow sent an extra 1,000 "peacekeeping" troops to the region, using the cover of a United Nations mandate to change the balance of power in the enclave.

Yet Georgia also is far from perfect. Its president, Mikheil Saakashvili, is charismatic, brash and a touch authoritarian. He arouses as much anxiety in European capitals as he does admiration. Saakashvili sees himself as a "father of the nation" and is determined to unify his country. If he is forced to choose between Georgian unity and the West, there is a danger he will be tempted to try a land grab of Abkhazia by force.

But despite of its president's mercurial character, Georgia represents the best hope for democracy in the region. The recent presidential and parliamentary elections -- which Saakashvili's party won handsomely -- have gone some way toward undoing the damage that his 2007 crackdown did to his democratic credentials.

What should the West do? Thus far, U.S. and EU actions have been largely limited to issuing statements calling for restraint -- statements that seem to have had little impact on either side. Unconditional Western support for Georgia could encourage Tbilisi to take actions that it may regret later. Yet preaching at Tbilisi without providing it with any credible support is not a viable strategy. In fact, the EU's attempts to avoid entanglement could simply end up strengthening the hawks on both sides.

The West needs to understand that the best way to keep the peace is to get involved, rather than standing on the sidelines. The United States and the EU need to send a clear signal to both sides. President Dmitry Medvedev must be told that future relations with the West -- from visits to cooperation agreements -- will be influenced by Russian behavior toward its neighbors.

On the other hand, Washington and Brussels must also send a message of tough love to Tbilisi, making it clear that Western support is conditional on Georgian restraint. If Georgia attempted to pursue a land grab, it would end any hope of integration into the West.

Above all, Western countries need to get directly involved in building confidence between the two sides. The current peacekeeping and negotiating formats are not working. For years they froze the tensions in Abkhazia, but now they have become pawns of Russian policy. Moscow is using the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe peacekeeping mandates as a fig leaf to legitimize a military buildup. It claims to be a mediator but is de facto a party in the conflict.

In the early 1990s, Western countries urged Russia to assume a leading peacekeeping role because they were not willing to put their own forces in. But today these peacekeepers are leading the region closer to conflict. Western countries must be prepared to withdraw those mandates and insist on new missions that are truly neutral and include greater Western participation, both civilian and military. Finally, Western governments need to help create a real peace process about Abkhazia's future. The Georgian strategy of publishing peace plans for Western consumption is not enough. Georgia must show that it is willing to engage in a real dialogue, without any preconditions, with the Abkhaz leadership.

The key to a long-term solution will be breaking down the isolation on both sides of the conflict by creating new human and economic ties and the kind of security that will allow people to start returning to their homes.

Ultimately the stakes in this crisis go well beyond the Caucasus. The escalation threatens to make a mockery of the principles on which the West has worked to build a post-Cold War peace -- principles that transcended spheres of influence and that gave all countries, big and small and irrespective of their geography, the right peacefully to determine their own future. Moscow agreed to those principles in the 1990s, but now, flush with nationalism and petrodollars, it flouts them. The West should not. That is why the situation in Georgia is a litmus test for us.