OH dear lord....
This isn't a land grab. The regions of Georgia that Russia are invading are pro-Russian. They welcome Russian military presence. They have banners on the street that say, "Putin Is Our President!" The deaths have not been caused by Russians, but by withdrawing Georgian troops.
This goes a long way back, but if anyone had listened to the experts on the Caucasus at the time, they all said, "If Kosovo declares independence, Russia will invade Georgia." Georgia just happens to be the latest pawn in the power game between Russia and the west. Georgia's president is pro-western. He has spent his time in office currying favor with Condi Rice and Dick Cheney. Mc Cain's foreign affairs expert is even on the Georgian payroll. Georgia is paying big money and kissing a lot of ass in the west in hopes of becoming so endeared to the US that he could do precisely what he has done: invade South Ossetia. South Ossetia has acted as an autonomous republic since Georgian independence. While technically part of Georgia, it's filled with ethnic Russians who would love nothing more than to go back to Russia. South Ossetia and its sister province, Abkhazia, are in the same boat in this respect. Expect Abkhazia to be the next venue of conflict.
You can also chalk this up to another winner for the Bush administration which has done everything possible to fuck-up western relations with Russia by continuing to treat and view Russia as it did in the cold war era. Moving into South Ossetia was a way for Putin to say, "fuck you," to the US, calling the bluff, of American half-promises to defend Georgia in its effort to regin-in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia's president is a naive man who believed what the US State Department told him in private. Those assurances gave him the balls to attempt to quash pro-Russian sentiment and anti-Geogrian governments in those provinces. Putin sees this as quid pro quo for the independence of Kosovo and is using it as a message to other similar Caucasian governments that the US will not come to their aid no matter how much they'll bend over for the US.
Be really careful when reading western press, particularly American press, on this because most get it very wrong. If Saakashvili, the Georgian president, who has drawn liberal parallels between himself and Stalin and Beria, had left well enough alone, he would not have the crisis he does today. Saakashvili, on the other hand, ran on a platform of assuring Georgian integrity and went ahead with trying to force the captiulation of the autonomous governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia despite warnings that this very thing would occur. He counted on western backing for his actions and hasn't gotten anything beyond some strong words and diplomatic protests which amount to nothing.
Both South Ossetia and Abkhazia were part of Russia until Stalin (who was Georgian himself), "gave," them to Georgia as a gift. They are not ethnically Georgian and never have been. They would both like to be independent or, failing that, reabsorbed into Russia. Imagine Churchill giving Cornwall to Spain or FDR giving Minnesota to Mexico and then guess where the people of those pawn states really want to be. As Putin, South Ossetians, and Russians themselves, see it, the Russian army are liberators, defending ethnic Russians from an overzealous Georgian central government that treats them as second class citizens.
I'll say it again: be very careful who you listen to on this one. There's a lot of completely clueless reporting going on here.