August 8 — Georgia attempted to impose a force-based solution to the South Ossetian conflict, which at that time had the status of an unrecognized republic.
As a result of the hostilities, over one and a half thousand civilians were killed in South Ossetia during the four days of the conflict. The Russian Federation deployed its troops to South Ossetia, and within a few days Georgian forces were pushed back from South Ossetia; during the conflict, the armed forces of Georgia also left the upper part of the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia, which they had previously controlled. Two weeks after the end of the active phase of the fighting, the Russian Federation officially recognized the independence of South Ossetia: on August 25, the Federation Council and the State Duma of the Russian Federation decided to appeal to the President of Russia with a request to recognize South Ossetia’s independence and to send the relevant appeals to the parliaments of other UN member states; on August 26, the President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, announced that he had signed a decree recognizing the independence of South Ossetia. On September 9, diplomatic relations were established between the states.