Explaining Foreign Policy Deviations: The Strategic Rationale of Russia’s Recognition of Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s Independence
Journal: Ethnopolitics
Year: 2021

This paper is aimed at explaining why Russia, despite its previous foreign policy course on the reverse, proceeded to recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008. It put itself at odds with its long-established foreign policy of non-recognition of secessionist entities in the post-Soviet space and primacy of territorial sovereignty in international relations. The paper argues that the recognition was not a necessary component of Russia’s military intervention, and was, as su