Moscow, 5 May: NATO's exercise in Georgia will not help to improve relations between Russia and the alliance, but one should not expect a cardinal deterioration through it, Russian political scientists say.

"Clearly, this exercise is not working for improving relations between Moscow and Washington and NATO," Aleksey Malashenko, a member of the Scientific Council of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, has told Interfax. Malashenko said that the present US administration was not interested in this exercise, but could not cancel it. "Obama does not need this exercise, but he could not try to cancel it, because this would be taken in the West as a major concession. It's not Obama's fault because the exercise was planned during the George Bush Jr. administration," he added.

"Certainly, Washington is conducting the 'cleaning' of the Bush course, but it cannot do it too fast. And Moscow understands this," Malashenko said. "On the other hand, Russia's reaction to this situation is quite natural, which is confirmed by concluding agreements with Abkhazia and South Ossetia on guarding borders with Georgia," he noted.

NATO's drill will not directly affect the stability of the situation in the Caucasus region, but it will seriously influence the domestic political situation in Georgia, Sergey Markov, the director of the Institute for Political Studies, has said.

"This exercise will influence the situation in the region only indirectly, but it may affect the strengthening of violence of the (Georgian President Mikheil) Saakashvili regime against the political opposition. The Georgian president has got accustomed to the fact that he got away with dispersing demonstrations and repressions, and he expects the West in the present situation to turn a blind eye to this again," Markov told Interfax. He added that the opposition "may act more vigorously in response to Saakashvili's repressions and stage a real revolution".