Russia's war in Georgia in 2008

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

In August 2008, Russia went to war with another former Soviet republic, Georgia. The conflict began after Georgia attempted to recapture the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which had fought a separatist war with Tbilisi during the 1990s. As fighting escalated, Russia sent in troops - seizing control of South Ossetia and also of Georgia's other breakaway region, Abkhazia. The five-day war ended in humiliation for Georgia - several towns, a Black Sea port and military airfields were bombed by the Russian air force. Several hundred people were killed and thousands of ethnic Georgians displaced. Nick Holland reports.

PHOTO: Russian troops on their way to South Ossetia in 2008 (Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service, I'm Nick Holland.
0:40.4	Following the invasion of Ukraine, we've been running a series of episodes looking at Russia under
0:47.2	Vladimir Putin. In this one, I'm taking you back to a previous invasion by Russian military forces, one that happened in 2008.
0:59.7	In the summer of 2008, Russian tanks and troops were building up, maneuvering into position along
1:06.2	their border to the south, facing Georgia.
1:10.9	Georgia is a former Soviet state. The seeds of this conflict though were planted in the early days of its independence.
1:18.0	They started to grow in 2004 after new President Mikhail Sakashvili swept to power in the Rose Revolution.
1:27.0	We've got very important mandate from our population to clean up the country. He set about Ridding Georgia of rampant
1:35.9	political and bureaucratic corruption. In those first few years it was incredible to
1:42.0	see the transformation of the entire nation.
1:45.0	Georgian journalist Natalia Antalava was the BBC correspondent in the capital Tbilisi.
1:51.0	Putin was kind of willing to give Saqshvili and that revolution a chance, but what he was not willing to do is see Georgia succeed as a country that suddenly resembled much more a Western democracy than a post-Soviet state.
2:09.2	I mean, the Putin's existence is built on corruption and nepotism and he needs others to do business that way because otherwise it becomes an existential threat to him.
2:20.9	Also complicating Georgia's relations with Russia were two small separatist provinces inside
2:27.2	Georgia, called South Ossetia and Abkhazia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union both fought for independence but their status was never settled.
	...

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