Here’s what you need to know about South Ossetia, its ambitions to become a part of Russia and how the conflict relates to the war in Ukraine.
Dmitry Medoev, the foreign minister of South Ossetia, next to the rostrum honoring the Georgian breakaway region’s independence.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has rattled Europe, revived the NATO military alliance and helped rekindle conflicts from the post-Soviet era, including in places such asArrowRight It has also stirred pro-Russian sentiment in South Ossetia, a breakaway region in Georgia whose independence Moscow recognized in 2008. South Ossetian President Anatoly Bibilov said Thursday that the separatist state would take legal steps to join the Russian Federation “in the near future,” adding that he would put the issue to a referendum.
South Ossetia is a small Russian-backed breakaway region inside the internationally recognized borders of Georgia. Moscow recognized South Ossetia as an independent state, along with Abkhazia, also in Georgia, following the brief Georgia-Russia war of 2008. Since then, it has provided the region with financial support, stationed troops in its territory and offered Russian citizenship and other benefits to its roughly 55,000 residents.Georgia has lost de facto control of these regions.
“Since 2008, when the war happened, Russia has become pretty much the only power controlling and backing South Ossetia, and the region has been cut off from Tbilisi, from mainland Georgia,” said Maia Otarashvili, research fellow and deputy director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
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