***Translation sample available***

August 2008: for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia invaded a sovereign state. An independent nation since 1991 and an ally of the West, Georgia made its strongest commitment to democracy in 2004 with the election of a young Western-educated president, Mikheil Saakachvili. His open opposition to Vladimir Putin and his avowed dedication to democracy made him a certain enemy of the current Russian administration. But it was when Putin and Dmitry Medvedev recognized the independence of the two breakaway Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia that geopolitical tensions reached a crisis level.