Expert opinion

The earlier version of this paper was drafted and presented at international conference held in Brussels on 20-21 February this year.** The dramatic events in Crimea and Ukraine confirmed the logic and the validity of the made analysis, however, they also made it unavoidable to include additional thoughts and go beyond the geographic scope of the South Caucasus, to make final conclusions relevant for the rest of the former Soviet Union. In earlier paper we argued that Olympic Games 2014 were more relevant for the prospects of regional security architecture, rather than in terms of providing security guarantees for participants and town-visitors. We also suggested to increase the quality of the analysis by putting Olympic Games in the context of countries’ bilateral security relationships under serious scrutiny. The paper is a policy-driven contribution that attempts to provide an explanation i.e. rationale for Russian decision-making in the context of the Olympics and significantly affected Russia’s foreign and security policy towards its immediate neighbors. In light of recent developments between Russia and Ukraine some aspects of the earlier analysis applied to Georgia are very much valid and must be applied to Ukraine too. Georgian case serves as the exemplary narrative of how Russia may act in order to change strategically the environment, given its actual strength factors and obvious limitations.