Georgia is the world’s leader in terms of growth of military expenditures. While in 2002, its defense budget was 18 million US dollars, in 2007 it actually reached 900 million US dollars. Thus, over the last six years Georgia’s military expenditures increased fifty-fold. The state budget for 2008 earmarked about 780 million US dollars for the needs of the Georgian Defense Ministry. In July 2008, the Georgia's Parliament approved amendments to the state budget that increased military expenditures to 997 million US dollars (7 percent of the GDP or 20 percent of the state expenditures).
The acquisition of offensive weapons sharply increased in 2005-2008. From 1 January 2005 through 1 January 2008, the number of tanks in the Georgian army increased from 98 to 183, armored combat vehicles (ACV) – from 83 to 134, artillery pieces with a caliber over 100 mm – from 96 to 238, combat helicopters – from 3 to 9, combat aircraft – from 7 to 9. This estimate is made only on the basis of official data provided by Georgia in the framework of the CFE Treaty. The real picture is even more serious taking into account the extensive information on wide-scale illegal shipments of offensive weapons to Georgia.
Many NATO countries and several other states have consistently provided large-scale military assistance to Georgia, with the military equipment supplied free of charge or at a low price.
According to official data, the USA, Turkey, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Israel, Great Britain, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Poland took the most active part in strengthening Georgian armed forces. An exceptionally large amount of offensive armaments was supplied to Georgia from Ukraine between February and July 2008.
After the events of August 2008, the USA and some other countries have declared that they are about to start re-arming Georgia on a large scale.
The Georgian Defense Minister Vano Merabishvili said that "the war is not over". Mikheil N. Saakashvili's statements have been in the same vein.
8) The chronic inability of the Georgian leadership to meet their obligations under international agreements on the settlement in South Ossetia and Abkhazia has been fully demonstrated in the Georgian-Russian bilateral relations. When in 2005 Moscow and Tbilisi reached a principle agreement to completely withdraw all Russian military bases from Georgia before 2008, the essential part of this agreement was Georgia's obligation not to deploy any foreign military bases within the country, as well as to adopt an appropriate law. Moreover, these agreements were to establish a Russian-Georgian anti-terrorist center, since in the past the territory of Georgia had frequently been used by terrorists to stage up and launch raids against the Russian Federation.
Russia has accurately and ahead of schedule withdrawn its military bases from Georgia, despite the fact that Georgian authorities tried to disrupt this process by creating obstacles for relevant work and organized repeated provocations against the Russian military officers engaged in the withdrawal.
The Georgian side has not implemented any obligation in the framework of the mentioned Russian-Georgian agreements: the law on non-deployment of any foreign military bases on the Georgian territory has never been adopted and the initial contacts on establishing the Russian-Georgian antiterrorist centre have been terminated by the Georgian side.
Source: Russian Foreign Ministry
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