On the 7th of August 2008, Georgian military forces moved into breakaway region of South Ossetia, hoping to capture its capital of Tskhinvali. Under the orders of President Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia launches an offensive to reclaim what it believes is its rightful sovereign territory.

They will have to go through South Ossetia’s small military but a larger threat looms to the north: Russia. The ensuing Russian counterattack in South Ossetia and into Georgia itself will lead to Europe’s first large-scale conflict of the 21st Century and the dawn of a new age of Russian expansionism.

Thanks to:

• Professor Stephen Jones the founding director of the Program on Georgian Studies at Harvard University and the author of ‘Georgia: A Political History Since Independence

• Professor Ronald Grigor Suny, Professor Emeritus of History and Political Science at the Universities of Michigan and Chicago and author of ‘Forging the Nation: The Making and Faking of Nationalisms’.

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