The 2008 South Ossetian crisis: the first proxy war between NATO and Russia

August 2024 will mark 16 years since Russia launched its first major foreign military operation of the 21st century. This happened after the US satellite state of Georgia invaded the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Ten Russian peacekeepers were killed. That was the starting signal for the first proxy war between the West and Russia.

 

The war between Russia and Georgia was the greatest display of Russian military might since the end of the Cold War. For Russia, this conflict was of special significance: it not only marked the beginning of the current confrontation with the West, but also led to a major modernization of the Russian army.

 

After the defeat in the Cold War – which resulted in the collapse of the Russian Empire, that the USSR was after all – this war gave Russia back self-confidence. It clearly showed that it would respond fearlessly to any Western attack on its interests in the former USSR.

 

The war can be situated in the context of the American strategy of encircling Russia. The war in Georgia turned out to be a foretaste of the current Russian-Ukrainian war.

 

 

The origins of the South Ossetian crisis must be sought in the period when the USSR imploded. As a result, deep-rooted old conflicts, which had been dormant under the surface for decades and were de facto 'frozen' by the repressive state apparatus, became alive again. 

 

Until then, South Ossetia had been an autonomous province within the Soviet Republic of Georgia. With an area of 3,900 km² and 98,000 inhabitants in 1989, it was a small and inconspicuous mountain region in the South Caucasus. South Ossetia led an undisturbed existence until 1989, when Zviad Gamsakhurdia, President of the Soviet Republic of Georgia, proclaimed Georgian – which belongs to the Caucasian languages – as the official language of the entire Soviet Republic. Naturally, this caused unrest in South Ossetia. The subsequent request to Gamsakhurdia to recognize Ossetian – which belongs to the Iranian languages – as an official language in their autonomous province was not granted.

 

In December 1990, the Soviet Republic of Georgia revoked the autonomy of the province of South Ossetia. This reignited historic tensions between Georgians and Ossetians and led to a civil war on January 5, 1991. On May 29, 1992, the republic of South Ossetia declared itself independent. The civil war ended on July 14, 1992 with a ceasefire and the installation of a Russian peacekeeping force of 500 soldiers, which was stationed there with the consent of both Georgia and South Ossetia. The next 16 years were uneventful.

 

 

In 2003, the US brought the French- and US-educated Georgian lawyer Mikhail Saakashvili to power in Georgia through a so-called color revolution. Saakashvili was married to the Dutch Sandra Roelofs from November 1993 to October 2021. As the third president of independent Georgia, Saakashvili introduced major reforms. He also oriented the country towards the West and especially towards the US.

 

Saakashvili reformed the previously poorly organized and under-equipped Georgian army with a view to Georgia's NATO membership (meaning: deployment in foreign conflicts) and forcibly regaining control of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgian troops were trained by the US in the Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP) and in the Georgia Sustainment and Stability Operations Program (GSSOP). Georgia increased its military spending to over 7% of GDP, which is quite high. For comparison: in the Netherlands this amounted to 1.47% and 1.66% of GDP in 2022 and 2023 respectively, while the NATO standard is 2% of GDP. Georgia's military budget increased from $18 million in 2002 to $780 million in 2007. The army was armed by Israel (including unmanned spy planes) and the US, while there were also 1,000 to 1,300 Israeli and US military instructors in Georgia. Georgian troops participated in the NATO occupation force Kosovo Force (KFOR) in the Serbian province of Kosovo and in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

 

In violation of international law, Western countries declared the Serbian province of Kosovo, illegally occupied by NATO since 1999, independent on February 17, 2008. In order to gain control of this Serbian area, NATO had waged an illegal war of aggression against Serbia with particularly heavy violence. After all, NATO had not received permission from the UN Security Council for this, which was nevertheless necessary under international law and which therefore made this war a violation of international law.

President Putin said that Kosovo's illegal independence set a terrible precedent that would destroy the entire existing system of international relations. He also warned that this could come back like a boomerang in the face of the West as it strengthened the independence claims of separatist regions in Western Europe. It is precisely for this reason that five EU member states – Spain, Slovakia, Romania, Greece and Cyprus – still refuse to recognize Kosovo as an independent state. Putin also hinted that Russia could emulate the West by applying the same logic to the independence claims of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, which broke away from the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova. 

 

The West haughtily rejected Russian criticism and stated calmly that the Kosovo precedent would only be “a one-off event” that would emphatically create “no precedent”. By also calling the illegal events around Kosovo 'unique', the typical Western hypocrisy was once again emphatically highlighted: “With this unique exception, the European Union continues to uphold the territorial inviolability of states under international law”. This was yet another example of the double standards for which the West is so despised internationally.

 

Russia was then further provoked by the West: in April 2008, the NATO summit in Bucharest promised long-term NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Russia naturally reacted negatively to this as it saw it as a threat.

 

On May 7, 2008, former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev became the new President of Russia. He appointed his predecessor Vladimir Putin as prime minister.

 

 

In the late evening of August 7, 2008, Georgia announced a military operation to return South Ossetia to Georgian control. At around 11:35 PM the Georgian army already started artillery shelling. Due to the extremely high inaccuracy of the Georgian artillery, hardly any military targets were hit. However, South Ossetian civilians fled en masse. A few hours later – on August 8, 2008 at 2:30 AM – a ground offensive started against the 500 Russian peacekeepers and the approximately 2,500 South Ossetian soldiers. The intention of the Georgians was to capture the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval and the Roki tunnel.

 

The Roki Tunnel is a tunnel located at an altitude of 2,000 meters in the Caucasus Mountains, which is part of the Transcaucasian Highway and is the only land connection between South Ossetia and Russia. By capturing the Roki tunnel, Georgia wanted to isolate the Russian peacekeeping force in South Ossetia and force it to capitulate, as well as block the supply of Russian relief troops.

The timing of the offensive was very well chosen: all international attention was focused on the 29th Olympic Games in Beijing, which would start on the evening of August 8, 2008, President Medvedev was on holiday, Prime Minister Putin had arrived in Beijing on August 7, 2008 to attend the opening of the Olympic Games and in Beijing – which is four hours ahead of the time in Georgia due to the time difference – it was in the middle of the night at the start of the offensive (meaning: Prime Minister Putin and all members of the Russian delegation were in deep sleep).

 

By 3:00 PM on August 8, 2008, Georgian troops had captured a large part of Tskhinval and eight surrounding villages. However, the Georgian military plan had failed. The headquarters of the Russian peacekeepers in Tskhinval could not be captured. And above all, the Georgians failed to capture the Roki tunnel, which prevented the flow of Russian reinforcements from being cut off. Intense street fighting raged in Tskhinval, with Georgian troops suffering significant losses. Six Georgian tanks and four armored vehicles were also destroyed.

 

Surprised Russia responded late and clumsily, but with an enormous show of force. Two tank columns were sent through the Roki tunnel into South Ossetia. Around 6:00 PM, Russian tanks surrounded Tskhinval and shelled the Georgian positions. The Russian air force bombed the Georgian troops and artillery, but itself suffered unexpected losses from Georgian anti-aircraft fire. In the evening, the Georgian troops were driven out of Tskhinval.

 

After relieving the besieged Russian and South Ossetian troops in Tskhinval, the Russian army advanced into Georgia from South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia eliminated Georgian air defenses, gained air superiority over Georgia and sank one Georgian naval ship in the Black Sea. After August 10, 2008, the Georgian army collapsed and was disarmed by the Russians.

 

Russia's successful counter-reaction surprised both the US and Georgia. The Georgian army was destroyed in just five days (8-12 August 2008). Although the Russian army's old Soviet tanks suffered from heavy attrition and the Russian troops lacked advanced weapons and proper military communications, the high morale of the troops ensured a quick victory.

 

The war between Russia and Georgia ended with an EU-brokered ceasefire. On August 26, 2008 – two days after the end of the Beijing Olympics and two days before the 8th annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tajikistan – Russia recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. China sent $1 million in humanitarian aid to badly devastated South Ossetia, for which Russia publicly expressed its appreciation.

 

The war exposed the many problems of the Russian army and led to the drawing up of an improvement plan. The victory over Georgia was not due to the combat power of the army, but to the personal quality of the troops. In the following years, Russia introduced major army reforms.

 

For the first time since the fall of the USSR, Russia actively fought back against Western pressure. Tensions only increased in the following years, but Russia increasingly fought back. After all, NATO's expansion plans to the east pose a direct security threat to Russia.

 

 

One can ask why the US ordered a small country like Georgia (3.8 million inhabitants in 2008) to attack a major power like Russia (143 million inhabitants in 2008). It would be about the same as if the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg were to invade Germany or France. They knew all too well that Russia would certainly strike back hard. The only surprise was that it happened so quickly.

 However, the Georgian attack against Russia is a lot less absurd from a geopolitical perspective. The US had been busy for a number of years turning all of Russia's neighbors – including Georgia – into satellite states, which was a kind of encirclement of Russia. At the same time, the Americans were setting up a missile shield in Russia's western neighbors – in this case Poland and the Czech Republic – which would supposedly serve to intercept nuclear missiles from Iran, that was proclaimed a 'rogue state' by US President George Bush Jr. However, a CIA report from 2003, that only surfaced in 2007, already established that Iran could not possibly produce nuclear weapons and posed no danger to the West at all. The American missile shield was therefore naturally aimed against Russia.

 

Naturally, Russia was strongly opposed to this missile shield, which made it somewhat politically difficult for the US to push this through as Russian fears seemed valid. However, the seemingly crazy Georgian attack and the certain Russian military counter-reaction gave the US the opportunity to severely criticize Russia internationally, but also and above all ... finally and now without any pushback from other countries to push through that missile shield and to strengthen ties with Russia’s neighboring countries even more closely. For example, on August 14, 2008 – barely two days after the war – the Americans reached a final agreement with Poland on installing part of the American missile shield on Polish territory and on further strengthening Polish-American military cooperation. The American stranglehold on Russia was thus significantly strengthened by the Five-Day War. And that didn't bode well for the future...

 

Furthermore, the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia taught the US how far it could go in ex-Soviet areas. The Americans gained insight into Russia's defense capabilities: how Russia responded, whether it had sufficient resources, how the Russian army would tackle the invasion and how much time it would need to do so.

 

Moreover, the US and NATO wanted to see the South Ossetian issue resolved in order to allow Georgia to join NATO. After all, the NATO treaty stipulates that a country that does not have full control over its territory cannot become a member of NATO.

 

 

Mikhail Saakashvili has been serving a six-year prison sentence in Georgia since October 1, 2021 for serious physical assault and corruption. In addition, he is still under investigation for illegal enrichment, burglary, violation of the constitution, illegal entry into the country and unlawful use of violent force against journalists, politicians and peaceful demonstrators. For this, Saakashvili risks another five to eight years in prison.

 

Notably, the Prosecutor's Office of Georgia invited three highly qualified international experts to review the evidence in the criminal cases against Saakashvili: Paul Coffey (former head of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Division of the US Department of Justice), Moshe Lador (former Public Prosecutor of Israel) and Geoffrey Nice (Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia). According to their assessment, the evidence was sufficient to bring criminal charges against Saakashvili.

 

Although Saakashvili is now in prison, his toxic legacy is still felt. After all, it is very difficult to right the crimes of his rule over Georgia.

 

 

The 2008 Five-Day War was not comparable in scale to the Russian-Ukrainian war. But just like Georgia at the time, Ukraine is also an American satellite state. Unlike the Five-Day War, which was more of a test, the US's real intention with the proxy war in Ukraine is to exhaust Russia – in terms of manpower, finances, economy and military equipment – and preferably even disintegrate it.

The US failed to turn Georgia into an anti-Russian state. First of all, there was no support among the Georgian population for any conflict with Russia. The country was saddled with a pro-Western elite whose actions went against Georgia's interests. Furthermore, Georgians and Russians have more than 200 years of history and the Orthodox faith in common. These factors obviously have a lasting influence. This made it impossible to turn the Georgians against Russia.

 

On the other hand, the West did succeed in driving a wedge between Russia and Ukraine after the second Ukrainian color revolution in 2014. The West installed a regime of docile apparatchiks in Kiev, which manifested itself as a rabid opponent of Russia in terms of ideology , religion and interpretation of common Russian-Ukrainian history. In addition, the US and NATO have significantly armed and trained the Ukrainian military, turning Ukraine into an anti-Russian stronghold.

 

This was only possible due to cultural and historical conditions. Namely, there are two very different cultures in Ukraine.

 

 Primo, Eastern Galicia and Volynia in the far west of Ukraine were Orthodox areas until the 16th century. Since then, these areas have converted to the Catholic Church while retaining their Orthodox rite. They belong to the so-called Byzantine Catholic Church and are also called Uniates – former Orthodox who are united with Rome. As a result, they started to orient themselves towards the West and there arose hostility towards Russia. In Eastern Galicia and Volynia, an extremist nationalism developed in the interwar period and during the Second World War, which collaborated with Germany and committed gruesome mass murders against the ethnic Polish minority. Western rule over Ukraine also relies on these regions. There is no such thing in Georgia.

 

Secundo, the rest of Ukraine – including Donbass, Crimea, Novorossiya and Malorossiya – is a Russian-speaking Orthodox area, whose inhabitants have traditionally been oriented towards Russia. The capital Kiev and the surrounding region are also Russian-speaking.

 

When the US talks about human rights, it really means mineral rights. The Americans are stoking the human rights issue with the real intention of taking control of the natural resources of the country in question. The US set Ukraine on fire because it wants to control the natural resources of Donbass and Siberia. However, this is opposed by President Putin and the Russian army.

 

Then-President of Russia Medvedev commented on the 15th anniversary of the Five-Day War in 2023: “Exactly 15 years ago, Russia responded decisively to the cowardly attack on Tskhinval and expelled the aggressor. Behind the idiot Saakashvili stood the collective West, which then was already trying to stir up the situation in the immediate vicinity of the Russian borders. (…) The US and its vassals (…) are today once again waging a criminal war (…) in an attempt to wipe Russia off the face of the earth. The entire NATO system is practically openly fighting against us. We have enough troops to carry out all the tasks of the Special Military Operation. As in August 2008, our enemies will be crushed and Russia will achieve peace on its own terms. The victory is ours!”.