Russo-Georgian War

A five-day war broke out in August 2008 between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. An EU-commissioned independent fact-finding mission (the Tagliavini Report, 2009) found that Georgia had fired the opening shots of the conventional war, but that Russia's subsequent military response was disproportionate, and that Russia had spent years prior deliberately provoking the conflict by issuing passports en masse to South Ossetians and Abkhaz to manufacture a pretext for intervention. Russia formally recognised both territories as independent states after the war and has maintained military bases there since.