Russia has not yet achieved its goals in Georgia. Such a statement made Svante Cornell, Director of the Institute for Central Asia-Caucasus, in an interview with the Georgian service of Voice of America.

According to him, Russia cannot cope with the fact that it has lost an empire and that the peoples of the empire do not want to be with Russia anymore.

“Russia takes such steps when it realizes that it is losing something. They decided to occupy Abkhazia and the so-called South Ossetia, when they realized that they were losing Georgia and then they invaded Donbass and Crimea, when they realized that they had lost Ukraine. They don’t need South Ossetia - right? There’s not much there. It is also an emotional moment for Russia to punish the countries that do not want to be close to it.

Russia occupies only Christian neighbors and not Muslim countries.

The Kremlin’s regime is not as stable as it looks. We have no idea what might happen next. Recently, the occupation of Georgia has unfortunately become a secondary priority compared to such priority issues as the war in Syria or Ukraine. This is due to the fact that Georgia is considered to be a frozen conflict and no one wants to touch this conflict, if nothing changes. That"s the problem of Georgia.

First of all, Russia"s strategy has always been to weaken Georgia, weaken the government and break the government’s equilibrium, as well as to force the government to react to Russia’s steps. The second issue is that the Russia-Georgia conflict has been going on for almost thirty years”, - said Cornell.