Borderisation. The Kremlin’s unending war

Twelve years since the August 2008 Russian-Georgian War – when Russia’s aggressive policies divided neighbouring Georgia into different parts – the Kremlin still permanently reminds Georgians of this reality with barbed wire, border-signs, kidnappings and creeping annexation.

In order to describe the occupation lines which separate Georgia from the territories occupied by the Kremlin (Tskhinvali /Abkhazia), we first have to define the very concept of “borderisation”. This is because, just like the “little green men” in Crimea, the process of “borderisation” in Georgia has been managed by the secretive FSB (formerly the KGB), in recent years. Borderisation is the process of installing equipment (fences and barbed wires) on the line of occupation between territory controlled by Tbilisi and the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and the so-called South Ossetia (known to Georgia as the Tskhinvali Region), which are de facto controlled by Russian security forces.