Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Soon after the USSR fell apart in 1991, the disagreement between Russia and Georgia escalated into serious discord. The Russians closed their border with Georgia, shutting Georgian farmers out of their crucial market. Then the Russians started issuing Russian passports to Abkhazian citizens of Georgia. Next, the Russians signaled even stronger support for their Ossetian allies, and in a still-disputed sequence of events during 2008 Russian forces entered South Ossetia and engaged the Georgian military in a brief but costly conflict. After a ceasefire was brokered by international mediators, Moscow took the extraordinary step of recognizing the two pro-Russian autonomous regions of Georgia—Abkhazia and South Ossetia—as independent states! . . . Unlike Azerbaijan, predominantly agricultural Georgia has no energy card to play—although it did agree to permit the new pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey to traverse its territory, thereby angering the Russians even further. In addition, the Georgian government has courted the European Union and even NATO, seeking the security Georgians have lacked for centuries." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 224-5]