Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (L) attend the Victory Day military parade in Red Square in Moscow on May 9, 2008. Russia's saber-rattling over the Republic of Georgia has been escalating in the last days of Putin's presidency. (UPI Photo/Anatoli Zhdanov)

FRANKFURT, Germany, May 12 (UPI) -- Overwhelmingly, the tests that face the new duopoly of power in the Kremlin are internal and obvious. But Russia's future course may well be determined by an international dispute that has seemed relatively small and distant except for those most involved.

Suddenly, both the dispute and the wider implications are getting serious. Russia's saber-rattling over the small former Soviet Republic of Georgia has been escalating in the last days of Vladimir Putin's presidency.

A Russian missile shot down an unmanned Georgian reconnaissance aircraft that was in recognized Georgian airspace. Reinforcements have been sent to join 3,000 Russian "peacekeepers" in the breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia, on the pretext of a Georgian troop buildup that independent observers have failed to discern.

It is not clear whether the Kremlin is seeking a full-scale confrontation, but the provocations are becoming unpleasantly obvious. And so is the reason for them. Last month's NATO summit pointedly decided not to offer Georgia and Ukraine membership in the alliance.

Russia seems to have taken this as a signal that NATO will not directly oppose its assertion of a sphere of influence in the oil-rich Caucasus region, where Georgia offers the only oil pipeline to the West that is not under Moscow's direct control.