POTI, Georgia - Weeks before Russia invaded Georgia earlier this month, excavators in this key Black Sea port began to lay the ground for a $200 million tax-free zone to triple the port’s capacity and create, Georgian officials said, the Dubai of the Caucasus. Some of that soft green earth now is occupied by Russian tanks and soldiers camped behind huge, freshly dug trenches, within firing range of ships approaching the port. A second Russian checkpoint is about a mile away, along a river that’s sometimes used to ferry goods into eastern Georgia. The Russian presence is a stark illustration of how this 150-year-old port, which handles millions of tons of cargo moving between Europe and Central Asia, is now a key pressure point in the standoff between Russia and the West. The port is functioning normally again, despite numerous news reports to the contrary and the claim by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili - most recently in Thursday’s Financial Times - that Russia continues ‘to occupy’ Poti. The Persian Gulf-funded expansion project is now on hold, however, and major questions remain about the Kremlin’s intentions here. On Wednesday the United States shelved plans to unload 38 […]