This August marks the fourth anniversary of the five-day Russo-Georgian war of 2008. As usual, there has not been any lack of commentary on this event. There is still a dispute over who fired the first shot. And the issue of responsibility of Russian and Georgian leaders is still very much alive. This time, Vladimir Putin's feelings about Russia's preparations for the war have been the focus. Even without Putin's comments, it is clear that Moscow was reacting to Georgian attempts to violate the status quo established in the 1990s and that the responsibility for “unfreezing the conflict” can't be “awarded” to only one side.
Meanwhile, the debates about the “bad guys” and “victims of aggression” create serious obstacles for adequate understanding of the broader political processes that led to the five-day war, an event which was not unique and generated ill will among leaders in Russia and Georgia. It is time to stop looking at the complex phenomenon through the prism of great personal animosity between Putin and Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, or vice versa. All speculations on this topic appear reminiscent of forgotten ruminations that without the failed meetings between Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev and Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin and Aslan Maskhadov could have reversed the contemporary history of the Caucasus. The consequences of the five-day war, the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian conflicts as well as other ethno-political quarrels should be examined in the context of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
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