Georgia condemned the Russian occupation of its territory on Tuesday, a day before the tenth anniversary of the “war of the five days” after which Moscow recognized two Georgian separatist territories, significantly contributing to the deterioration of East-West relations, reports Al Jazeera.
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“It was a war against Georgia, aggression, occupation, and a clear violation of international law,” emphasized Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili at a meeting with his ministers and officials from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine.
“The appetite of the aggressor has only intensified after the invasion,” he added, referring to neighboring Russia.
Moscow and Tbilisi have long disagreed over the plans of the small former Soviet republic in the Caucasus to join the EU and NATO, which Russia considers a dangerous encroachment on its sphere of influence.
These tensions escalated into conflict in the summer of 2008 when the Russian army entered Georgian territory to assist South Ossetia, a pro-Russian separatist region where Tbilisi conducted a bloody military operation.
Moscow’s forces defeated the Georgian army within five days and threatened to seize the capital.
With a peace agreement mediated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian forces withdrew, but Moscow recognizes the independence of the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and maintains a large number of soldiers there.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which make up 20 percent of Georgian territory, declared independence and defended it in the first war with Georgian forces after the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s.
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The International Criminal Court (ICC) began an investigation in 2016 into the Russian intervention in Georgia, where crimes were committed on both sides, resulting in hundreds of deaths and more than 120,000 displaced persons, according to a report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees published in August 2008.
