South Ossetia

An autonomous region in Soviet Georgia

South Ossetia lies on the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus. Many Ossetes also live across the mountains in North Ossetia–Alania, a republic of Russia.^[1] Moscow made South Ossetia an autonomous region (oblast) of Soviet Georgia in April 1922.^[2]

On 10 November 1989 South Ossetia’s regional council asked Georgia to raise it to an autonomous republic, and Georgia refused. On 23 November the Georgian nationalist leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia led a rally of 20,000–30,000 Georgians towards Tskhinvali, and there were violent clashes.^[2] On 20 September 1990 the regional council declared South Ossetia a sovereign Soviet republic.^[2]

On 11 December 1990 Georgia’s new parliament, led by Gamsakhurdia, abolished South Ossetia’s autonomy. The same month Georgia began a blockade of the territory that lasted until June 1992.^[2]

War and the Sochi agreement

Georgian and Ossetian militias fought through 1991, even after Soviet units were sent in that April, and both sides committed atrocities against civilians.^[2] On 19 January 1992 most voters in a South Ossetian referendum backed independence from Georgia and union with Russia; Georgia called the vote illegal. The regional parliament declared independence on 29 May 1992.^[2]

On 24 June 1992 Boris Yeltsin and Eduard Shevardnadze, Georgia’s new leader, signed a ceasefire in Sochi.^[2] It set up a Joint Peacekeeping Force of one battalion each from the Russian, Georgian and Ossetian sides, up to 500 soldiers apiece, under a Russian commander.^[5] The fighting left Georgia without control of large parts of the region.^[5]

South Ossetia adopted a constitution as a republic in 1993 and elected a president in 1996, and in an unofficial referendum in late 2006 it again backed independence. No other country recognised it.^[1]

Five days in August 2008

On the night of 7 to 8 August 2008 a sustained Georgian artillery attack struck Tskhinvali.^[5] The Georgian advance was soon stopped, and Russian forces pushed deep into Georgia, reaching the port of Poti and stopping short of Tbilisi.^[5] About 850 people were killed and more than 100,000 fled their homes.^[5]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, acting for the EU, brokered a ceasefire on 12 August.^[5] Russian and South Ossetian forces kept advancing for some days afterwards and took the Akhalgori district. Georgia had run it until then, although it lay inside South Ossetia’s Soviet-era boundary.^[5]

An EU fact-finding mission led by the Swiss ambassador Heidi Tagliavini reported in September 2009. It found that Georgia’s shelling of Tskhinvali was not justified under international law, and that much of Russia’s response went “far beyond the reasonable limits of defence”.^[5] It said several elements suggested that ethnic cleansing had been practised against ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia during and after the war.^[5] It also concluded that South Ossetia had no right to secede, and that other countries’ recognition of it broke international law.^[5]

“The shelling of Tskhinvali by the Georgian armed forces during the night of 7 to 8 August 2008 marked the beginning of the large-scale armed conflict in Georgia, yet it was only the culminating point of a long period of increasing tensions, provocations and incidents.”^[5]

A line that hardens

On 26 August 2008 Russia recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Two days later Georgia’s parliament declared both territories occupied by a Russian force.^[6] An EU monitoring mission began work on 1 October 2008. It patrols next to the boundary lines, but the authorities in South Ossetia and Abkhazia have not let it in.^[7]

Since the war, ditches, fences, barbed wire, sensors and watchtowers have gone up along the line. By 2022 the EU mission counted almost 90 km fenced off, 40% of the passable parts of the roughly 400 km line.^[4] The village of Khurvaleti lost 36 hectares of fields and pasture, and villagers lost access to their cemetery. Georgians were detained for crossing it 163 times in 2015 and 64 times in 2020.^[4] Khurvaleti is a few kilometres from Georgia’s main east–west highway.^[4]

In July 2026 Nauru withdrew its recognition, as Vanuatu and Tuvalu had before it, leaving Russia, Syria, Venezuela and Nicaragua.^[3]

A vote on joining Russia

On 13 May 2022 South Ossetia’s leader, Anatoly Bibilov, called a referendum for 17 July on joining Russia. Bibilov had just lost re-election, and on 31 May his successor, Alan Gagloev, suspended it.^[8] Gagloev cited the “uncertainty of the legal consequences” and said Russia must be consulted first.^[8]