The war in Georgia has provoked unprecedented levels of patriosm in Russia. The majority of the population supported their army's actions in the Caucasus. And even the fiercest critics of the Kremlin have now become proud Russians.

 Members of the Kremlin-loyal youth organisation "Nashi" wave flags and hold a banner during a protest in front of the US embassy in Moscow during the Georgia war. I never thought I'd see the day when regular Russians, without any prompting, would voluntarily and passionately defend the actions of the Kremlin in conversations with a foreign friend.

But at a garden party in a Moscow suburb one evening at the height of Russia's flash war with Georgia in August, I was accosted by several old friends who were bursting to explain to me why Moscow had no choice but to send the 58th Army into Georgia, that it in no way constituted "aggression," and that Russia was clearly acting according to humanitarian concerns.

"Why do you [Westerners] always paint Russia black, even when we're just trying to save our own citizens from genocide?," Sasha, a professor of political science asked me. "We've been facing a creeping invasion of our country by NATO for years, but thank God our leaders are finally taking action to stop it," said Andrei, an executive with a big Western-based multinational corporation. I was astounded. I personally believe that Russia had a half-way decent case for its actions, and I've argued as much in print. But I'd never before heard, or ever expected to hear, any of my friends -- a fairly broad spectrum of intellectuals, businesspeople, a couple of diplomats -- sounding like a news broadcast on Russian state TV. Nowadays, virtually all of them do. These are people who, in the past like most educated Russians, would automatically assume that a Kremlin official was lying if his lips were moving. Things have definitely changed.