A roll of explosions at a Russian-occupied military base this week sent a clear Kremlin message to Georgia about the frailty of its infant military and its prospects for Nato membership.
The Russian army destroyed a hoard of Georgian arms and ammunition captured in a brief war that saw Georgian forces scattered, their bases seized and equipment carried off.
"Of course, there was a great symbolism to them doing this at the Senaki base," said Professor Tornike Sharashenidze of the Georgian Institute for Public Affairs.
"In their eyes Senaki was a bit of Nato that they just don't want to see in Georgia."
Senaki, in western Georgia, was a 'showpiece' base built to Nato specifications under a military build-up launched by President Mikheil Saakashvili after his 2003 Rose Revolution.
Barracks were of a level of comfort unfamiliar to Russian soldiers, facilities and equipment were Nato-style, many of its soldiers trained in alliance countries.
"It's all wrecked now," Deputy Defence Minister Batu Kutelia said. "The buildings, the arms, all gone. If you consider that this is one of the few such modern bases we have, this was very important for us."
Witnesses saw Russian troops, who had earlier parried a Georgian attack on the pro-Russia rebel region of South Ossetia and thrust into Georgia's heartland, remove crates of equipment at other bases, airports and ports throughout the country.
Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia's General Staff, employed a military directness.
"We will not leave a single barrel, a single cartridge for Georgia, which initiated this bloodshed and shot at our peacekeepers and... civilians in South Ossetia," he told Interfax agency. What was not destroyed would be taken as war trophies.
Georgia, which as a Soviet republic formed Moscow's frontline defence against Nato, now wants to join that alliance - something Moscow deeply begrudges since it still considers Georgia within its rightful, historical sphere of influence.
Western analysts believe Russia's decision - after fighting over the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali - to move against the Georgian military in the country's heartland was in part giving vent to Kremlin anger over Georgian Nato ambitions.
Georgia's army, now some 28,000 strong, was built-up from scratch after the 1991 collapse and division of the Soviet Union. While rump armies fell 'ready-made' to larger former Soviet republics such as Ukraine and Russia, Georgia was left with virtually nothing.
Former President Eduard Shevardnadze began restoring the army after a civil war in the early 1990s dominated by irregular militias; but it was with the accession of Mr Saakashvili that the spending soared and the real build-up began.
Mr Saakashvili set his eyes from the start on Nato, as well as another goal that could keep that very door closed to him - re-conquest of the rebel regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia lost in 1992. His one-time defence minister once famously said he would spend the new year in Tskhinvali or resign.
The break with the Soviet past has a particular charm for the West and for many Georgians. It means Georgia has virtually no remnants in its ranks of the old Soviet Army - no Soviet generals or Soviet-style hierarchies that would grate with Nato.
Its arms, however, are not Nato-compliant. Most of them are Russian-style weapons and armour, tanks and artillery, bought second hand from former Warsaw Pact countries acquiring modern Western material after joining Nato.