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It has been more than a decade since Georgia was promised eventual membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) at the 2008 Bucharest Summit. Russia invaded Georgia later that year and continues to occupy Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region (more commonly known as South Ossetia).REF After years of economic, governance, and military reforms, this partial occupation remains the primary roadblock to meaningful progress on Georgia’s NATO aspirations. Other NATO members do not want to risk a confrontation with Russia by inviting Georgia to join the alliance.
Russia has perfected a formula to block the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of its neighbors: invasion and partial occupation. Moscow applied this formula to Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 on the eve of that country signing an Association Agreement with the European Union (EU). Moldova shares a similar situation over Transnistria.