It may be nerve wracking for Saakashvili to watch the protesters, but as long as the protesters just remain peaceful, let them protest. The protesters will eventually tire of the protesters if the government doesn't give the non-protesters reason to support the protesters. Any use of force could be a problem:
In addition, using even minimal force would just risk giving the Russians a pretext (because the Russians might engineer bloodshed or just lie) to use their nearby troops to "rescue" the protesters.
The government briefly and on a small scale with no fatalities or serious injuries, used force, and the Russians are lying about it. Putin is on record:
“Rallies are violently dispersed, opposition figures are wounded, shot at with rubber bullets, there is blood in the streets, there are more and more political prisoners, mutinies in the armed forces,” Putin said in the interview, transcript of which was posted on the Russian government’s website.
Russia wants to crush the pro-Western Georgia and they're ready for round 2:
Anti-government protests since April 9 have paralyzed Tbilisi by blocking roads and obstructing entrances to government buildings.
A brief and bloodless mutiny at a tank base outside Tbilisi last week raised questions about Saakashvili's grip on power. The mutiny occurred on the eve of NATO military exercises in Georgia, which Russia has condemned.
Less than two weeks after Russia took formal control of the borders of Georgia's rebel republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a buildup of Russian forces along the de-facto border between South Ossetia and Georgia — 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Tbilisi, Georgia's capital — was evident.
"It is clear that we have seen the second wave of the increase of forces and armor in the last month," said Shota Utiashvili, head of the Interior Ministry's analytics' department. "These are alarming signs for us."
My expansive faith in the good will of Putin's Russia does not extend to believing they are not involved in trying to foment chaos in Georgia to justify a march on Tbilisi.
