"... Russian peace enforcement operation ...."
Right.
Let me try a brief summary of the event as supported by the International Fact Finding Mission, instead:
13 years ago on August 8, war started as a culmination of years of provocations from Russia, Tskhinvali and Georgia, with the
Sochi agreement treated like worth less than toilet paper by that point. Following skirmishes between Geo, separatist and allegedly also Ru troops, the situation had escalated out of hand already by August 1 ( and arguably before ) when a Geo police car was blown up and both sides started shelling and sniping eachother, losing dozens of people killed and wounded in the process. Attacks continued throughout the evening of August 7 despite calls for ceasefire. Meanwhile Tskhinvali was being completly evacuated starting on 3 August and receiving reinforcements from the North Caucasus. Georgians started losing more people, including 2 peacekeepers. In response, the Georgian government mobilized troops enmasse at the conflict border and decided to not only retaliate but also re-establish government control over the entire enclave. All sides confirm that Tskhinvali was virtualy a ghost town by August 8.
Interesting fact: most of the separatist governing body at the time was made up of Russian ex military and MIA like Anatoly Barankevich and Mikhail Mindzaev. Ru generals Vasiliy Lunev and Anatoly Zaitsev headed the Abkhaz forces during that conflict.
Fully justified according to the IFFM, to eliminate armed separatist elements that were posing a direct threat and attacking settlements and peacekeeping units, the Georgian side unfortunately went beyond the acceptable parameters of a proportionate response when proceeding to occupy Tskhinvali and surrounding villages in an effort to reassert total control over the entire region. While the town had been evacuated, the fighting still caused about 162 civilian deaths, at least according to Russia. Earlier, almost as soon as it broke out, Mindzaev and Ru media claimed the total death toll ranged in the thousands and were quick to accuse Georgia of genocide, in order to incite rage. This lie in turn, motivated the separatists to act in full prejudice when consequently retaliating against Geo civilians after the army had pulled out. It's not like enough damage had already been done ...
Russia ofc saw a perfect opportunity to intervene, using claims like "attack on Russian citizens" as pretext. Factualy all of them were dismissed by the IFFM similarily to Georgia's claims of self defense after August 8. Another interesting one was the death of 10 Ru soldiers of the JPKF ( Joint Peacekeeping Force ) during an attack on their garrison in Tskhinvali, which to this date remains controversial.
Both sides accuse eachother of initiating a fight. Ru JPKF commander, Kulakhmetov, allegedly
approved of coordinates being forwarded to artillery units, which took Geo troops under fire. Georgian forces at some point opened up on an observation point on the roof of the building, where they suspected those were transmitted from. It turned out, they were correct. An Ossetian officer of the JPKF did in fact direct fire at them from that position. By that point, the garrison was considered a target. It's still unclear who did what first and when.
There is also footage that shows Georgian troops literaly
walking and standing next to one of the Russian JPFK outposts in the morning of August 8, trying to avoid any type of confrontation with them. This was evidently not to be.
The war ended with hundreds killed on both sides, including 224 Geo civilians in the Tskhinvali region and Georgia proper and many more hundreds wounded, tens of thousands of IDPs and whole villages leveled. Both sides used prohibited munition and missiles against densely populated areas, though Russian ones actualy worked. Russian troops moved far beyond the conflict border into Georgia proper, occupying several towns and military bases, plundering them and expanding their presence in the occupied territories. Building dozens of additional military infrastructure, while bulldozing abandoned and ruined Georgian settlements.
Since then, efforts to commune and reconcile are constantly undermined by third party hostility, kidnappings and creeping annexation of Georgian previously uncontested territory by Russia, since 2008.
It sounds so one sided because it is. After that war, Georgia physicaly didn't do anything to step up and do smth about it, because it simply can't. So Russian "borderisation" is completly unopposed.
