August 8 marked the 10th anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Georgia. On the Atlantic Council website, Damon Wilson and David Kramer commented: “Exactly ten years ago, Russian forces attacked Georgia, bringing to a violent end a nearly two-decade long advance of a Europe whole and free. In the wake of NATO’s failure to agree on how to advance the membership aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine at its Bucharest Summit months earlier, Moscow acted to block those prospects with its invasion. Moscow’s actions in Georgia 10 years ago previewed its far deadlier attacks on Ukraine, which continue today.”
Russia, you see, strongly opposed Georgia’s potential membership in NATO and it was supporting the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – a useful move, since territorial disputes are an impediment to NATO membership. Russia contends it was Georgia that started the war by launching an offensive on Tskhinvali in South Ossetia, but most observers agree with former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili who this week told Current Time TV that “Only complete idiots and complete imbeciles can say that Georgia started it.”
On August 6, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev repeated the old accusation that NATO’s expansion to Georgia poses a threat to Russia. He warned: “There is an unresolved territorial conflict… and would they bring such a country into the military alliance? Do they understand the possible implications? It could provoke a horrible conflict.”
Meanwhile, the European Union declared its “firm support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia within its internationally recognized borders,” and Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, whose representatives traveled to Tbilisi, called on Russia to withdraw its occupying forces. “Ten years after the Russian military aggression against Georgia, Russia still has not implemented its commitments towards Georgia, as agreed under the 12 August 2008, Ceasefire Agreement. Consequently, Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali/South Ossetia are still de facto occupied by Russia and the creeping annexation of these regions continues,” read the joint communiqué released by the four countries.
Yuriy Yekhanurov, who was Ukraine’s defense minister at the time of Georgia’s invasion, underscored that, if there had been a positive response to Georgia’s and Ukraine’s future membership at NATO’s Bucharest meeting in 2008, “none of this would have happened to Georgia or, later, to Ukraine.”
Ten years after the Russian invasion of Georgia and four years after its invasion of Ukraine, Russia cannot be allowed to continue blocking their NATO membership, and NATO must act now to clarify their path to membership.