How Russia Won the Hybrid War in Georgia — and What the West Got Wrong

The August 2008 Russo-Georgian war achieved less than Moscow had hoped. Russia seized 18 per cent of the country's territory, areas it had already controlled since the early 1990s, but failed to alter Georgia's strategic direction. What military force could not achieve, Moscow pursued through other means — disinformation, economic leverage, elite capture, and a sustained cognitive campaign targeting Georgian society's deepest cultural anxieties. Over the following decade and a half, these tools proved far more effective than tanks.