Occupied territories of Georgia
In May 2014, President François Hollande had three-day trip to South Caucasus countries and finished by visiting Georgia on 13 May. Speaking at a joint news conference with his Georgian counterpart Giorgi Margvelashvili, he said that Georgia’s territories remain occupied and the cease-fire agreement is not fully respected. "France did everything for the agreement to be reached and the conflict to stop. However we see today that occupation still exists and Georgia still has to regain territorial integrity," Hollande said while speaking about the 2008 Georgia-Russia war.
Occupied territories of Georgia
According to Elizabeth Cullen Dunn and Michael S. Bobick, this situation is called "occupation without occupation" and is a distinctive form of warfare. Vladimir Putin's form of warfare is "the spectacle of dominance", that creates docile populations within the new geographic boundaries of Russia in Europe. The key element of strategy is to use the separatist regions as perches from which to intimidate the larger states that once administered them. A creeping occupation and subsequent takeover of strategic positions in the breakaway regions aim at re-establishing control over Russia's "near abroad". By occupying breakaway provinces and establishing military bases from which to threaten occupation of the rest of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, Russia can influence the actions of the sovereign states. The "war without war" and "occupation without occupation" is more flexible and cheaper than a real occupation, since the potential target can be rapidly changed.