Caucasian War Timeline

Timeline: 2008

January: Georgian Ministry of Defense released a “strategic defense review” that laid out its broad military planning for the breakaway regions.

March 19: Saakashvili was in Washington to push for NATO membership for Georgia

April 3: Bush lobbied NATO leaders for Ukraine and Georgia to be welcomed into a Membership Action Plan that prepares nations for NATO membership, the night before the NATO summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania. Mr. Bush lost that battle.

April 4: NATO leaders agreed to endorse a United States missile defense system based in Eastern Europe, and the Europeans said invitations to the membership plan for Georgia and Ukraine might come in a year, at the next summit.

April 17: McCain spoke with Saakashvili by phone, a call arranged by Randy Scheunemann, his major foreign policy adviser. After the conversation, McCain issued a statement, on that “we must not allow Russia to believe it has a free hand to engage in policies that undermine Georgian sovereignty.”
Scheunemann is a leading neo-conservative lobbyist for oil companies and arms manufacturer. He was until recently a registered foreign agent for Georgia, and was Director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Later that day, Scheunemann's Orion Strategies lobbying firm signed a new $200,000 deal with Georgia.

April 21: a Georgian pilotless reconnaissance plane flying over Abkhazia was shot down. Georgia accused Russia of shooting it down while Mr. Putin expressed “bewilderment” at Georgia’s sending planes over Abkhazia.

May and June: Russia increased the number of troops in South Ossetia and sent troops into Abkhazia for ‘humanitarian’ reasons.

July: Condaleeza Rice in Tbilisi, where, aides said, she privately told Mr. Saakashvili not to let Russia provoke him into a fight he could not win. But her public comments were far more supportive.

July 21 - Aug 6: Joint US-Georgian military exercises involving more than 1,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers at a former Soviet base Monday, amid heightened tensions with Moscow.

August 1-5: Shelling from South Ossetia to Georgia proper increased significantly Georgian police officers were wounded by remotely detonated explosions in South Ossetia. Troops from Georgia battled separatist fighters, killing at least 6 people; the Georgians accused the South Ossetian separatists of firing at Georgian towns behind the shelter of Russian peacekeepers.

August 6: Separatists fired on several Georgian villages. The Russian Defense Ministry and South Ossetian officials say that Georgians provoked the escalation by shelling Russian peacekeeping positions in the region’s capital of Tskhinvali, along with civilian areas.