Russia’s gains from its brief war with Georgia, however, were tangible. It had consolidated pro-Russian separatist control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, granting Russia a permanent foothold on roughly 20 percent of Georgia’s territory. Just as in Ukraine in 2014, Russia hadn’t sought to conquer or occupy its smaller neighbor, but instead to lock it into a “frozen conflict,” a permanent state of low-level war on its own soil. The dream of many Georgians, like Mshvidobadze, that their country would become part of NATO, and thus protected from Russian aggression, had been put on indefinite hold.
