On the night of 7-8 August 2008, Russian troops passed through the Roki tunnel and entered Georgian territory, launching the operation that, in five days of war, consolidated the Russian military presence in the secessionist regions of Abkhazia (Apkhazeti) and South Ossetia (Samachablo), later recognised by Moscow and a limited number of allied countries.
According to a pattern that we would learn to recognise a few years later, the invasion took place at the culmination of alarge-scale military exercise in the border areas, using hundreds of unofficial ‘volunteers’ in support of the regular troops.The attack was carried out and justified by the alleged desire to protect the Russian-speaking or pro-Russian minorities in the country, who at the time were the protagonists of genuine secessionist and insurrectionary guerrilla activity.

Georgia, a story of resistance

Georgia’s history is marked by the tenacious and continuous resistance to the attempts to subjugate its cumbersome neighbours: Mongols, Turks, Persians and finally Russians. On 22 April 1918 , following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Caucasus country first federated with Armenia and Azerbaijan into the Transcaucasian Federal Democratic Republic, and then, on 26 May finally proclaimed its independence as the Democratic Republic of Georgia. The democratic experiment lasted less than three years: on 25 February 1921, troops of the Red Army’s Caucasian Front occupied the republic and incorporated it into the Soviet Union, despite a tenacious war of resistance that lasted until August 1924 under the leadership of national hero Kakutsa Cholokashvili.

The massacre of 9 April 1989: the turning point towards Georgian independence

In the spring of 1989 , the first demonstrations to demand independence from the USSR also began in Georgia. On 4 April, thousands of people began to gather in front of the Parliament in the capital to demand secession from the USSR and support the Georgian independence movement, but also to oppose the separatist movements in Abkhazia. On the night of 9 April, at 3.45am, Soviet troops led by Colonel General Igor Rodionov burst in armed with batons and shovels, massacring 21 people, including 16 women. Over 2,000 people were also poisoned by the gas used to try to disperse the protest. After this tragedy, the Soviet authorities were unable to rehabilitate themselves and the country moved definitively towards independence, which was sanctioned by referendum on 31 March 1991 and significantly ratified on9 April 1991, on the second anniversary of the massacre.

The hard 90s

Having painstakingly regained its independence, the country immediately faced both an economic crisis caused by the traumatic transition to a market economy, secessionist threats in the north, and a conflict between the nation’s various political souls that led to a series of civil wars. Between December 1991 and March 1992, Georgia was the scene of an internal war between forces loyal to President Zviad Gamsakhurdia and paramilitary militias led by Tengiz Kitovani and Jaba Ioseliani; the conflict continued in 1992-1993 in the Samegrelo region, where the so-called ‘Zviadists’ continued their resistance against the Shevardnadze government. The outcome was a period of deep political instability that paved the way for the first war in South Ossetia (1991-1992), fought between Georgia and the separatist territories: the conflict left part of the former autonomous South Ossetian oblast de facto under the control of the separatists supported by Russia, but not recognised internationally. After the clashes, a joint peacekeeping force of Georgian, Russian and Ossetian troops was stationed in the territory. In Abkhazia, the 1992-1993 war ended with the defeat of Georgian forces, the exodus of over 250,000 ethnic Georgians from the region, and the consolidation of separatist control, also militarily supported by Russia and not internationally recognised. Both conflicts left the two regions in a post-conflict stalemate and under a de facto separatist administration, with frozen but never resolved tensions that Moscow skilfully exploited in 2008.

2008 the August war

On the night of 7-8 August 2008, Russian forces, already massed at the border, crossed the Roki tunnel connecting North Ossetia with Russia, launching a large-scale invasion. Columns of armoured vehicles advanced towards Gori, a few kilometres from Tbilisi, while aerial bombardments hit military positions and civilian infrastructure. The Russian navy imposed a naval blockade and arson attacks destroyed large areas of forest.
In the previous days, after weeks of shelling by separatists on several Georgian villages, the government in Tbilisi had ordered military operations in Tskhinvali with the aim of stopping the attacks and re-establishing control over the area. Moscow used this initiative as a pretext to justify the aggression.
In parallel, in the western sector, separatist forces in Abkhazia, supported by Russian contingents, opened a second front. The war ended after five days, on 12 August, with the mediation of the European Union and the signing of a cease-fire.

12 August 2008 – the plan disregarded

On 12 August 2008, thanks to the mediation of French President Nicolas Sarkozy – then President-in-Office of the Council of the European Union – Georgia and Russia signed a ceasefire based on six points.
The agreement provided for the non-use of force, the cessation of hostilities, free access to humanitarian aid, thewithdrawal of Georgian and Russian troops to their positions prior to 7 August 2008, and the start of international negotiations on the future of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
However, in the following months, several clauses were disregarded by Russia: the complete withdrawal did not take place, with permanent bases and contingents maintained in the two regions; the Russian military presence and exercises across the border lines violated the first point; humanitarian access was hindered in several areas; and the Geneva negotiations stalled after the Russian recognition of the independence of the two regions.

The consequences of war

Despite the brevity of the conflict, the outcome for the small but ancient Caucasus nation was disastrous. Georgia suffered the deaths of around 170 soldiers, 14 policemen and 228 civilians, with over 1,700 combatants and non-combatants injured(Georgian Ministry of Health; Human Rights Watch – After the August War; OSCE report). More than 192,000 people were forced to leave their homes, and among them some 30,000 Georgians from South Ossetia and the Kodori Gorge were never allowed to return(Amnesty International – Civilians in the Aftermath of War). The overall outcome was a substantial violation of the ceasefire clauses and the consolidation of the military status quo in favour of Moscow, with the Georgian regions Apkhazeti and Samachablo transformed into the puppet states Abkhazia and South Ossetia, under direct dependence on Moscow.

The difficult path to Europe

The years following the conflict saw the Georgian economy struggle to recover and begin a process of integration into the Western democracies that culminated in the partnership with NATOand, most importantly, with Georgia’s application for membership of the European Union, for which it officially applied on 3 March 2022, a few days after theRussian invasion of Ukraine, in a context of accelerating applications for European integration also from Ukraine and Moldova. On 14 December 2023, the European Council finally approved the status of EU candidate country for Georgia and initiated a series of projects aimed at strengthening democracy in the country in order to reach the standards necessary to be integrated as an EU member.

From European dream to institutional crisis: the authoritarian turn of 2024

However, the process of reforms in a pro-European direction suffered a major setback that began with the adoption of a Russian-style ‘foreign agents’ law in May 2024.
In October 2024, new elections marred by fraud and intimidation led the oppositions to disavow the election result by boycotting the parliament, now essentially composed only of members of the governing Georgian Dream party, founded by the pro-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who alone holds more than 20% of the country’s GDP.
On 28 November 2024, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze finally announced the suspension of EU accession negotiations andthe denial of any financial support from the EU until the end of 2028.
This decision sparked mass protests across the country and ignited internal political tensions, with accusations of a shift away from the Euro-Atlantic integration path resulting in the continuous demonstrations that have been going on for the past 300 days in the street where the Parliament is located, Rustaveli Avenue, i.e. the place where the demonstrators ofApril 1989 died.

2025 – between repression and denial

The difficult path towards European integration and democracy is now characterised by the autocratic and justicialist regression of the ruling Georgian Dream party, which has launched a campaign of repression and arrests against journalists, political opponents and ordinary demonstrators. International organisations such as Amnesty International have denounced the systematic use of preventive detention and disproportionate fines to discourage participation in demonstrations, describing these practices as incompatible with the standards of a democratic state.
At the same time, the narrative promoted by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has taken on conspiracy and revisionist overtones, attributing the entire responsibility for the 2008 Russian-Georgian war to then President Mikheil Saakashvili, who – according to him – acted on the orders of external powers to attack Russia, going so far as to cite the Deep State as the instigator.
A reconstruction that overturns the historical truth and contradicts past statementsby Kobakhidze himself.

A warning ignored

The 2008 war in Georgia was the warning the world ignored, the first aggression of post-Soviet Russia against a sovereign state. The virtually non-existent reactions of the international community, which had already kept silent about Russian crimes in Chechnya, gave Putin the prospect of substantial impunity in the event of new operations outside his borders. We will find the same dynamics in the Ukraine in 2014: militias of pro-Russian volunteers, the protection of minorities as a pretext, a large-scale exercise aimed at the border, the creation of puppet states and, above all, the will to punish a former satellite state guilty of wanting to move politically towards decidedly more democratic parts of the world.

In 2008 the world kept quiet.
In 2014 sanctions on Russia were minimal.
In 2022 it was no longer possible to look the other way.
Impunity makes autocrats aggressive and it took three wars to remind us of this.

The European security process that today seems to be slowly getting underway necessarily passes through the Caucasus, in the far east of the continent, where Georgian civil society faces a daily battle for democracy and independence. Let us not repeat the mistakes of the past, let us not leave it alone.