Why is Russia occupying Georgian territory?

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This is the script for my video posted on September 18, 2026. Watch it on TikTok.

Ukraine is not the only country under Russian occupation. Nearly a fifth of the country of Georgia is under Russian control. But why would Russia care about a small country buried in the Caucasus Mountains?

Georgia is a perfect example of a country defined by its geography. It sits on the isthmus between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and the Greater Caucasus and Lesser Caucasus mountains act like walls to the north and south respectively.

It’s also divided by the Likhi mountain range, which splits the country into two natural halves: the eastern basin of the Kura river system, which was historically oriented toward Persia, and the western lowlands of the Black sea, which faced Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottomans.

The corridor has always been an important route for armies and trade. The Mongols, Timur, Ottomans, Persians, and Russians have all used it for military logistics, and the Silk Road once ran through it. The terrain made it easy to invade but very difficult to unify.

This is why ancient Georgia was divided. In the west was Colchis, a native kingdom ringed with Greek trading colonies, and the famous destination of Jason and the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece. To the Greeks it was the exotic edge of the world, full of magic and wealth.

To the east was the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli, confusingly called Iberia by the Greeks, though it’s unrelated to the Iberian Peninsula. It became the core of the Georgian state, and its people, along with the Colchians to the west, are who most modern Georgians descend from.

In the 4th century CE, Kartli became one of the earliest states to convert to Christianity. Over the following centuries the Georgian Church won its independence and a distinctive Georgian alphabet took shape, and both became core pillars of national identity long before Islam came to dominate the surrounding regions. This is arguably the main reason Georgians identify as European and Christian, and as separate from modern Russia and the Muslim world.

Georgia was first united around 1008, and under David IV, sometimes called "the Builder", it was restored into the dominant power in the Caucasus. But invasions from the Mongols in the 13th century and then Timur around 1400 gutted the kingdom, and by the 1490s it had broken into smaller competing kingdoms and principalities.

Then in 1783, Georgian king Erekle II placed Kartli-Kakheti under Russian protection with the Treaty of Georgievsk. Twelve years later Persia invaded to punish that choice, and Russia sent nothing. Tbilisi was sacked and largely destroyed, and tens of thousands were killed or enslaved. And yet this was the moment that drove Georgia decisively toward Russia for good.

In 1801, Russia annexed the kingdom outright and deposed its royal dynasty. The remaining principalities were absorbed over the following decades, the Georgian Orthodox Church lost its independence to the Russian Holy Synod, and by 1864 Russia had completed its conquest of the North Caucasus.

They drove out Muslim populations and conducted mass deportations and exiles of Abkhaz people to the Ottoman Empire. This depopulated central Abkhazia and emptied land for Georgians, Armenians, Russians, and Greeks to resettle. Stalin and Beria later accelerated it by organizing Georgian settlement of the region in the 1930s and 40s. The Abkhaz became a minority in the place bearing their name.

Of course after WWI, the independent Democratic Republic of Georgia was founded under a social-democratic Menshevik government. But it lasted less than three years before the Soviet Red Army invaded and repressed the country’s independence despite broad international recognition of the Georgian government.

The South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast was created within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, or SSR, in 1922, widely read as a reward for Ossetian loyalty during the invasion, though some historians call it a botched attempt at conflict resolution. Abkhazia, a Soviet republic tied to Georgia by treaty since 1921, was downgraded to a unit inside Georgia in 1931. And all of these actions gave each group an artificial administrative shell, an identity tied to the Soviet Union, and a grievance that would cascade when Soviet authority eventually collapsed.

In 1991, amid the fall of the Soviet Union, Georgia declared independence and a man named Zviad Gamsakhurdia was elected president. He pursued an ethnic-nationalist line, summed up by opponents in the phrase "Georgia for Georgians," which he denied ever using. It alarmed minorities and helped to ignite conflict.

He was overthrown in the civil war of 1991 and 1992. South Ossetia had already declared itself sovereign in 1990, hoping to stay in the Soviet Union and unify with North Ossetia, and Georgia’s drive to centralize power turned that standoff into a war. Georgian forces also entered Abkhazia in 1992, officially to secure rail lines and free captured officials, but really to stop the region from breaking away. They lost, and between 200 and 250 thousand ethnic Georgians were driven out. Russia brokered the 1993 ceasefire, and a peacekeeping framework eventually froze both conflicts.

But the Georgian state was weak, corrupt, broke, and in places lawless. The 2003 Rose Revolution brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power, and his government delivered dramatic, measurable reforms. Petty corruption was nearly eliminated. The police were completely rebuilt. The economy began to grow. But the downside was an increasingly concentrated executive and growing pressure on the media, the courts, and protesters.

Then, after years of increasing tensions, provocations, and incidents, in August 2008 the Georgian military began shelling the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, stating it was necessary to stop prior separatist shelling of Georgian villages. An EU-sponsored independent report found the force used was neither necessary nor proportionate, and a violation of international law. But it also found that this followed prolonged Russian provocation, passportization, and the arming and training of Abkhaz and South Ossetian forces, and that Russia's subsequent advance went far beyond defense and also violated international law. Russia then recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. The ceasefire required forces to withdraw to pre-war positions, but Moscow read a clause allowing additional security measures as license for a permanent garrison. Russian forces never left, and they've blocked EU monitors from entering the regions ever since.

Since 2008, Russian and South Ossetian forces have installed fences, signs, and barriers along the boundary line to gradually push it deeper into Georgian-controlled territory. Villages have been cut in half. By 2015 the line sat just 450m from Georgia's main East-West highway and the Kartli-2 power line, and a 1.6km stretch of BP's Baku-Supsa oil pipeline had ended up on the wrong side of it.

So why would Russia support South Ossetia and Abkhazia against Georgia? Well, first off, the country's main strategic value is its role as a transit route between the Caspian and the Black Sea. It's the only working corridor that lets hydrocarbons and trade bypass both Russia and Iran.

That route is actually under threat from the other direction. The recent stabilization between Armenia and Azerbaijan opened the way for a US-brokered corridor through Armenia's Syunik province, linking Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave. It would cut into Georgia's transit role, and the US would hold development rights for 99 years. As of 2026 it hasn't been built.

But arguably the main reason Russia cares is that a few months before the 2008 war, NATO declared that Georgia and Ukraine would become members. There wasn’t even a Membership Action Plan, but Russia read it as a provocation anyway. In practice, NATO has been unwilling to admit countries with unresolved territorial disputes, because an active war could get pulled in under Article 5. So as long as Russian troops sit in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia doesn't join.

And in 2024, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream party passed a law requiring organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents. Ivanishvili, notably, made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s. The EU halted Georgia's accession process, the West pushed back with funding freezes and sanctions, and the government responded by suspending accession talks until 2028. In 2025 it went further with a second, stricter foreign agents law copied from US statute.

That triggered sustained mass protests, detainments, and police violence. The US suspended its strategic partnership. Georgia made an ultranationalist former footballer president through a new indirect electoral process. Opposition figures were arrested. And in the October 2025 local elections, Georgian Dream claimed about 81% amid an opposition boycott and low turnout, while protesters tried to storm the presidential palace.

The prime minister vowed to crack down, and Georgian Dream has since gone to the Constitutional Court to ban every major opposition party. Protests have now run past 650 straight days, and in March 2026 the EU suspended visa-free travel for Georgian officials, all while 80% of Georgians consistently indicate they want to join the EU.

But in general, the truth is that Russia doesn’t need Georgia to be an ally to accomplish its goals there. Georgia is a symbolic and practical battleground for a Russia that can't afford another EU or NATO member on its southern border, and that can prevent this at almost no cost by keeping two frozen conflicts frozen.

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