[60] In 1918, conflict began between the landless Ossetian peasants living in Shida Kartli, who were affected by Bolshevism and demanded ownership of the lands they worked, and the Menshevik government-backed ethnic Georgian nobility, who were legal owners.

[63] Historians such as Stephen F. Jones, Emil Souleimanov and Arsène Saparov believe that the Bolsheviks awarded this autonomy to the Ossetians in exchange for their help against the Democratic Republic of Georgia,[61][64][65] since this area had never been a separate entity prior to the Russian invasion.

[72] By June 1992, the possibility of a full-scale war between Russia and Georgia increased as bombing of Georgian capital Tbilisi in support of South Ossetian separatists was promised by Russian authorities.

Rule over Transcaucasia, according to Swedish academic Svante Cornell, would allow Russia to manage Western involvement in Central Asia, an area of geopolitical importance.

[98] During the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, American president George W. Bush campaigned for offering a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine.

[102] The Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Yuri Baluyevsky said on 11 April that Russia would carry out "steps of a different nature" in addition to military action if Ukraine and Georgia join NATO.

[109] In late April, the Russian government said that Georgia was assembling 1,500 troops and policemen in the upper Kodori Gorge area and was planning to "invade" Abkhazia,[110] and that Russia would "retaliate" against Georgian offensive and had deployed more military in the separatist regions.

[114] Georgia demonstrated video footage captured by a drone to the BBC allegedly proving that Russian forces used heavy weaponry in Abkhazia and were combat troops, rather than peacekeepers; Russia rejected the accusations.

[121] In late June, Russian military expert Pavel Felgenhauer predicted that Vladimir Putin would start a war against Georgia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia supposedly in August.

[38][148] Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that Russian military was being deployed to the Georgian border on 6 August and that "there is no doubt that Russia thus demonstrates determination to protect its citizens in South Ossetia.

"[149] On the evening of 6 August, an attempt by Saakashvili to contact the President of Russia about the conflict was curbed by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which said: "the time for presidential negotiations has not yet arrived.

[156] One day earlier the South Ossetians rejected direct negotiations with Georgian authorities, demanding a meeting of the Joint Control Commission for Georgian–Ossetian Conflict Resolution.

[157] Tbilisi had left the Commission in March, demanding that a new mediation scheme included the European Union, the OSCE and the Provisional Administrative Entity of South Ossetia.

[174] According to Russia, it suffered its first casualties at around 12:00 when two servicemen were killed and five injured following an attempt by the Georgian troops to storm the northern peacekeeping base in Tskhinvali.

[176] Most of Tskhinvali and several villages had been secured by Georgian troops by the afternoon;[162] however, they failed to blockade the Gupta bridge and the key roads linking Tshkinvali with the Roki Tunnel and the Russian military base in Java.

[164] The Russian Air Force mounted attacks on Georgian infantry and artillery on 8 August, but suspended sorties for two days after taking early losses from anti-aircraft fire.

[177] Military expert Ralph Peters later noted that anyone "above the grade of private" knew that such a large-scale Russian "response" was not spontaneous since it was impossible "even to get one armored brigade over the Caucasus Mountains" without lengthy planning.

[199] The next day, Russian forces pushed to about 40 kilometres (25 mi) from Tbilisi, the nearest during the war, and stopped in Igoeti at the same time as Condoleezza Rice was received by Saakashvili.

In an opinion piece published in The New York Times on 6 March 2022, the incumbent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson stated that Russia's actions in Georgia in 2008 was one of the lessons of the past that the West has failed to learn.

[312] The International Criminal Court concluded its investigation in the Situation in Georgia in December 2022, delivering arrest warrants for three de facto South Ossetian officials believed to bear responsibility for war crimes committed during the 2008 war — Mikhail Mindzaev, Gamlet Guchmazov and David Sanakoev, respectively, holding the positions of Minister of Internal Affairs, head of a detention centre in Tskhinvali, and Presidential Representative for Human Rights of South Ossetia, at the relevant time.

[341] An article by DELFI detailed some cases of bias in the Tagliavini commission's work, such as the omission of the Russian troop deployments to South Ossetia before the Georgian counterattack on Tskhinvali, and concluded that "the flexible Swiss diplomat and her minions made it seem like Georgia was the provocateur" and thus emboldened aggressive Russia's president to attack Ukraine.

[342] NATO increased its naval presence in the Black Sea significantly following the Russian invasion, with ships dropping anchors in Georgian ports,[343] and according to the US Navy, bringing humanitarian assistance.

[344] NATO said that its presence in the Black Sea was not related to the Georgian crisis; its vessels were carrying out typical visits and preplanned naval trainings with Romania and Bulgaria.

[12] The 1st Infantry Brigade, the only one instructed to NATO standards, was serving in Iraq at the beginning of the war;[349] on 11 August, the United States Air Force flew it to Georgia.

[353] United States officials said that "one of the few effective elements of the [Georgia]'s military" was air defence, with the analysts crediting the SA-11 Buk-1M with shooting down a Tupolev-22M bomber and contributing to the loss of some Su-25s.

[361] The Georgian air-defence early-warning and command-control tactical system was linked via Turkey to a NATO Air Situation Data Exchange (ASDE), which provided Georgia with intelligence during the conflict.

Colonel-General Aleksandr Zelin, commander-in-chief of the Air Force, did not set foot in the command post, instead running Air-force operations on a mobile phone from his workroom without any help from his air-defence aides.

[360] Swedish analysts Carolina Vendil Pallin and Fredrik Westerlund said that although the Russian Black Sea Fleet did not meet significant resistance, it proved effective at implementing elaborate operations.

CAST director Ruslan Pukhov said that "the victory over the Georgian army ... should become for Russia not a cause for euphoria and excessive joy, but serve to speed up military transformations.

"[375] Roger McDermott wrote that slight dissimilarity in criticism by civilian and official references after the conflict was "an orchestrated effort by the government to 'sell' reform to the military and garner support among the populace.