You may have seen something in the news about riots in Georgia. That’s the country, not the state. Georgia, like Ukraine, was a republic of the USSR. When the USSR broke up, Georgia was just behind the Baltic States in pressing for its independence.

Its location is farther from Europe than Ukraine, but Georgia has been invited to join the EU. Georgia, like Ukraine, is on the Black Sea. Russia is to its north, in particular the part of Russia called the North Caucasus, which includes Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia. Those areas were at war with Russia from 1999 to 2009 in an attempt to secede. Russia installed Ramzan Kadyrov as the governor of Chechnya, and he has kept the secession talk down. Kadyrov is now rumored to be seriously ill, though.

In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia on the pretext of independence for Abkhazia and South Ossetia (green and purple on the map) whose agitation for independence had been stoked by Russia. Although open hostilities have ended, Russia continues to have a military presence in both regions. The situation is, of course, analogous to Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

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