Slight correction: the Russo-Georgian War began when Georgia tried to recapture South Ossetia, a de facto independent state that is de jure part of Georgia.

During the Soviet era, South Ossetia was an autonomous oblast within the Georgian SSR. After Georgia declared independence from the USSR, South Ossetia declared independence from Georgia. They fought a war that ended in a stalemate, and Russia has essentially guaranteed South Ossetia's independence since.

The West recognized South Ossetia as being part of Georgia, iirc. So then for the West the Russian attack on Georgia was an invasion. Whatever Russia’s “de facto” claim was.

Because today too, Russia claims that there is a “de facto” independent country in western Ukraine they are “helping”. Pretext for war, just as the South Ossetia pretext.

Import bit is: the West never reacted to Russian aggressions in any meaningful way.

Yandex bought the land in 2013, so it was before the invasion of Crimea.

But after Georgian invasion of 2008, and Chechen wars of 90s.

The west didn't really care about the invasion of Georgia or Chechnya. All they did was "condemn it" to save face, then moved one. Same with the occupation of Crimea in 2014, except that now they condemned it harder.

Same how the west also didn't care, that after WW2, the USSR occupied all of Eastern Europe, or that before that, Hitler occupied Austria and Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

Seems like there's a historically repeating pattern here where the amount of warmongering and territorial occupation you can get away with is directly proportional to to your military force and inversely proportional to the willingness of other states to go to war with you as the occupier. Just like how the US and its coalition got away scot free after bombing the shit out of Vietnam, the middle east and destabilizing North Africa. All we could do is "condemn it" and take in refugees.

>"the amount of warmongering and territorial occupation you can get away with is directly proportional to to your military force and inversely proportional to the willingness of other states to go to war with you as the occupier"

I would also add economic power and ability to inflict painful sanctions to the equation. But were you really expecting anything else? This is how it always worked and the only thing that prevents hot global scale conflicts now I think is the threat of MAD.

I never saw as many EU flags as in Tiblisi, Georgia in 2015, not even in the EU. But Georgia is so far away that's impossible to help in case of a Russian attack. The Black Sea would be a way to get there only after a war with Russia. Only Turkey could do something because they share a land border. This is totally outside the EU reach except with words.