Translated material
Love at a distance
The annexation of South Ossetia is disadvantageous for Russia
The president of the unrecognized republic of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, yesterday in Moscow again declared his readiness to seek the inclusion of this territory into Russia through the Russian Constitutional Court.From the point of view of international law, South Ossetia is part of Georgia, but since the late 80s, Tbilisi’s jurisdiction has not extended to this small region, closely adjacent to the southern slope of the Greater Caucasus Range. In 1990, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, the South Ossetian Autonomous Region within the Georgian SSR assumed the status of a republic and declared independence from Georgia. In January 1991, Georgia sent its armed forces to the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. This marked the beginning of a bloody conflict between Georgians and Ossetians, whose villages are located in this territory in close proximity to each other. The war in South Ossetia ended with the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in 1992.
At the same time, the population of South Ossetia actually twice confirmed its refusal to join Georgia - in 1991, the South Ossetians voted to preserve the USSR, and in 1992 - for their independence from Tbilisi. Nevertheless, the sovereignty of South Ossetia was never recognized by either Russia or the international community, in contrast to the borders of the former Soviet republics that became state republics at the time of the final collapse of the USSR.
Today, most of the territory of South Ossetia only de jure belongs to Georgia. The Georgian-Russian border in this area essentially does not exist. On the Russian side, border guards are not interested in having a Georgian visa, and even a foreign passport is not required if you have a Russian civil one. On the Georgian side there is a post of the South Ossetian border detachment. The Georgian police and customs post is located just south of Tskhinvali, on the de facto border of South Ossetia and Georgia. But Tskhinvali's jurisdiction does not extend to all of South Ossetia - there are vast enclaves of ethnic Georgians who are subordinate to the Tbilisi government.
The population of South Ossetia is about 70 thousand people. The region's economy was almost completely destroyed in the 90s as a result of war and neglect. After the Georgian authorities began to fight smuggling on the Trans-Caucasian Highway, connecting Vladikavkaz with Tskhinvali and further with Tbilisi, the republic was virtually left without income and now lives mainly on Russian subsidies, although there is still a European program for the economic rehabilitation of the conflict zone. On the territory of the republic, located an hour and a half drive from Tbilisi, the Russian ruble is used, the time does not differ from Moscow, and the vast majority of residents have been citizens of the Russian Federation since 2002.
Today, the only officially recognized authority in South Ossetia is a mixed control commission consisting of representatives of Georgia, Russia, South and North Ossetia. The commission is subordinate to a peacekeeping corps consisting of Georgian, Ossetian and Russian battalions. Over the past few months, Georgia has been insisting on an inevitable change in the format of the peacekeeping mission, since from its point of view, Russian peacekeepers are not so much protecting peace as supporting South Ossetian sovereignty. At the same time, the Georgian battalion is not actually subordinate to the peacekeeping command, which makes the mission of the “blue helmets” very difficult.
According to a number of South Ossetian independent experts, by the beginning of 2004, the South Ossetian problem was close to a solution that could well be acceptable to Georgia. But the actual closure of Transkam, and then the summer shelling of Tskhinvali, despite the presence of peacekeepers, led to an escalation of the conflict. Over the past few months, the situation has been teetering on the brink of war, especially in the Georgian enclaves, where Georgians and Ossetians can be in direct contact and periodically block vital communications for each other.
South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity fears that the “war party” has prevailed in the Georgian leadership and Tbilisi is preparing for a forceful solution to the conflict. He recalled the statements of Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili, who promised to celebrate New Year 2007 in Tskhinvali. “We are hospitable people and we invite everyone to the holiday, but not with weapons in our hands,” said Mr. Kokoity. According to him, South Ossetia will not become part of Georgia even if the latter is headed by Eduard Kokoity himself.
Instead, the unrecognized republic wants to join Russia. Mr. Kokoity appeals to documents from 1774, according to which Ossetians accepted citizenship of the Russian Empire, and to acts of the early 90s, which prove, as he believes, that South Ossetia never left either pre-revolutionary Russia or the USSR. And thus, it should be considered part of the modern Russian Federation. South Ossetia has repeatedly appealed to Russian parliamentarians with a request to consider the issue of admitting the republic to Russia, but they responded only with sympathetic remarks. The idea of a request to the Constitutional Court was first voiced in March of this year.
Even if the Constitutional Court accepts the complaint for consideration - it could well be filed by Russian citizens, of whom the majority are in South Ossetia - the judges are unlikely to recognize the priority of the arguments of the South Ossetian side over international law. But even if we assume that the Constitutional Court agrees with Mr. Kokoity and that a new entity does eventually emerge as part of Russia, this is unlikely to bring the country any tangible benefits. In this case, within the problematic south of Russia, another ultra-subsidized, geographically inaccessible region will appear, in which the smoldering ethnic conflict will inevitably continue. Migration from the dysfunctional republic, which already reaches, according to some sources, 10 thousand people a year, will complicate the situation in North Ossetia and will become, among other things, an obstacle to the final resolution of the internal Russian Ossetian-Ingush conflict.