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Bulletin of Geography. Socio–economic Series
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ISSN 1732–4254 quarterly
Bulletin of Geography. Socio–economic Series
journal homepages:
http://www.bulletinofgeography.umk.pl
http://versita.com/bgss
© 2014 Nicolaus Copernicus University Press. All rights reserved.
Bulletin of Geography. Socio–economic Series No. 23 (2014): 53–71
Russia’s role in the official peace process in South Ossetia
Tomáš Hoch1, CDMR
, Emil Souleimanov2, CDMR
, Tomáš Baranec3,DMR
1
University of Ostrava, Faculty of Science, Department of Human Geography and Regional Development, Chittussiho 10,
710 00 Ostrava, Czech Republic; phone: +420 775 232 959, e-mail: tomas.hoch@osu.cz, (corresponding author); 2
Charles University,
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Russian and East European Studies, U Kříže 8, 158 00 Praha 5 – Jinonice, Czech Republic,
phone: +420 774 542 576, e-mail: arslanlik@yahoo.com; 3
The Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, Tsereteli
Ave 72, 0154 Tbilisi, Georgia, e-mail: tomas.baranec@zoznam.sk
Hoch, T., Souleimanov, E. and Baranec, T., 2014: Russia’s role in the official peace process in South Ossetia. In: Szymańska, D. and
Biegańska, J. editors, Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, No. 23, Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, pp. 53–71.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/bog-2014-0004
Abstract. The aim of this article is to analyse the role of Russia in the transformation
of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict and analyse this important period in the
history of the Caucasus, where Georgia and its secessionist region of South Ossetia
have been trying to find a peaceful solution to their post-war situation. Major
milestones of the official peace process are set in the context of Russian-Georgian
relations. We then proceed to the analysis of the internal changes within the Russian
Federation at the turn of the millennium and try to find a connection between
this internal transformation of Russia and the transformation of the conflict
in South Ossetia. The most important factors behind the more assertive approach
by the Russian Federation towards Georgia in the last decade are considered: internal
centralisation of power and economic growth of the Russian Federation,
the reinforcement of the importance of the South Caucasus as part of the geopolitical
discourse within the Russian Federation, the deterioration in Russian-Georgian
relations, and the suppression of the fear of the spill-over effect since the end
of Second Chechen War.
Contents:
1.	 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 54
2.	 Research materials and methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 56
3.	 The course and outcome of the conflict in South Ossetia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 56
4.	 Official peace process in South Ossetia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 57
5.	 Russian influence on conflict transformation in South Ossetia during the 1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 60
6.	 Turnaround in Russian foreign policy towards Georgia with the onset of Vladimir Putin . . . . . . . 	 62
7.	 Impacts of changes in Russian-Georgian relations and internal changes in the Russian Federation
on conflict transformation in South Ossetia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 65
Article details:
Received: 05 August 2013
Revised: 19 October 2013
Accepted: 11 November 2013
Key words:
South Ossetia, Russia, Georgia,
de facto states, unrecognised states.
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–7154
8. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 67
Notes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 68
Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 69
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 	 69
1.	Introduction
This year marks twenty-two years since the fall of
the Soviet Union as well as the bipolar organisation
of the world, forming for more than four decades
not only the foreign policy concept of individual
powers and the mass psychology of several generations
of their peoples, but also the maintenance of
fragile ceasefires among ethnic groups in many areas
of the socialist world. On the basis of the Constitution
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR),
international recognition was guaranteed to fifteen
Soviet republics, encompassing formal sovereignty
and so the right to secede. Problematic in this respect
proved to be the fact that the administrative
system of the USSR had several levels, ranging from
Soviet republics to autonomous republics, regions
and districts, and the right to secede was guaranteed
only at the highest level. Amid the growing belief in
universal nationalism, fulfilling an ideological vacuum
arising in connection with the decline of socialism,
many smaller nationalities within the Soviet
Union began to demand, at the end of the 1980s
and beginning of the 1990s, the right to a  higher
degree of autonomy or even secession, which were
guaranteed to citizens of the federal republics.
Due to the fact that the autonomous entities
had been established on the ethno-linguistic principle,
which guaranteed titular nationalities a considerable
degree of privileges, the newly emerging
states had to deal with the problem of how to maintain
their territorial integrity while guaranteeing extensive
rights to their ethnic minorities stemming
from the period of the USSR. The highly heterogeneous
ethnic and religious structure of the population,
supported by many historical grievances
and a  number of autonomous entities, led to the
situation, that disintegration of the USSR has been
the most problematic in the area of South Caucasus
(Fig. 1). After the collapse of the USSR and the
emergence of an independent Armenia, Azerbaijan,
and Georgia, this region became the scene of
a number of armed conflicts, some of which were
secessionist in character. One of them, the conflict
in South Ossetia, forms a topic of our study.
While during the first decade after the war that
took place in South Ossetia in the early 1990s, there
was a great deal of discussion in the peace process
between Tbilisi on the one hand and Tskhinval(i) (1)
on the other, regarding various versions of symmetrical
and asymmetrical federations (cf., e.g., Coppietersn
et al., 2003), i.e. possibilities for a peaceful
solution that would respect the right of the Ossetians
to sovereignty while also taking into account
the principle of the territorial integrity of the Georgian
state. The war in South Ossetia in August 2008
utterly transformed the geopolitical map not only
of the South Caucasus, but also of the entire postSoviet
space.
In August 2013, the fifth anniversary of the fiveday
war in South Ossetia was commemorated. Although
this anniversary was marked by bitterness at
the thought of the considerable human and material
losses inflicted on the Ossetian nation during the
war, South Ossetia anticipated lively celebrations,
as the inhabitants of the war-torn population, decimated
by a mass exodus from the troubled region,
had received formal recognition of their independence
by the Russian Federation and subsequently
several other countries in 2008, after almost twenty
years of effort. But in Georgia, the night of the
7th
and 8th
of August 2008 is annually remembered
as another in a series of national tragedies that have
afflicted this South Caucasian republic in the last
two decades.
The conflict in question is basically a dispute
between two national communities over the existence
of their respective nationhood projects. On the
one side are the Ossetians, who, after the devastating
war of 1991-1992, acquired de facto control of
about half the territory of South Ossetia, declared
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–71 55
their sovereignty and independence from Georgia,
and so far have received recognition from five United
Nations member states (Russia, Venezuela, NicFig.
1. Map of the South Caucasus with disputed areas of unresolved conflicts
Source: Fall, 2006: 199
aragua, Nauru and Tuvalu). On the other side are
the Georgians, who still consider South Ossetia to
be an integral part of Georgia.
There are also indirect players in addition to
these direct ones which have significant impact on
the dynamics of the conflict, the most important of
which are Russia, EU, USA, Turkey, Iran, and Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE). In the case of the Russian Federation, there
is a considerable divergence of views on whether to
classify it as a direct or indirect player, but no one
questions the fact that Russia is heavily involved in
South Ossetia. Russia’s policy towards the conflict
in South Ossetia has always been multi-dimensional
and it should be added that it was not always
homogeneous and underwent significant changes
over time. In addition to political aspects, it also
included economic, military, security, and humanitarian
dimensions. The official statements of the
Kremlin had expressed no direct support for any
of the warring parties until 2008. That changed after
the August war in South Ossetia, when Russia
recognised South Ossetia as an independent state.
The act of international recognition of South Ossetia
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–7156
itary and economic assistance from the Russian
Federation, which gives this de facto state a strong
position in the strictly negative negotiations with
Tbilisi on the return of refugees and resolving their
political status in any form of autonomy or federation
within the vertical distribution of power between
Tskhinval(i) on the one hand and Tbilisi on
the other. In recent years, South Ossetian politicians
have been saying that any negotiations with Georgia
must be based on the recognition of their independence,
but Georgia flatly refuses this, because it
continues to consider this region to be an integral
part of its sovereign territory currently occupied by
Russia (Georgian Law on Occupied Territorries).
It is obvious that the official peace process on stabilising
relations between Tbilisi and Tskhinval(i) is
at an impasse.
2.	Research materials and methods
The aim of our study is to explore an important part
of the regional history, when Georgia and its secessionist
region of South Ossetia attempted to find
a peaceful solution to their post-war situation, and
to analyse the role of Russia in the transformation
of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. Due to the fact
that the official peace process has been completely
stuck at this impasse since 2008 and the views of
both main conflicting parties remain the same, this
article is primarily devoted to the development of
the peace process in the years 1992-2008, a period
when the Georgian and South Ossetian politicians
at least periodically sought to find a compromise to
their post-war situation. Although we understand
peace initiatives to be a multi-layered process and
consider initiatives of the so-called ‘track two diplomacy’
(2) to be a very important part of the peace
process, we will concentrate our study only on ‘track
one diplomacy’. These activities could be characterised
as methods and initiatives in the peace process,
which is being conducted by government representatives
of the conflicting parties, their career diplomats
or other important official representatives of
Georgia and South Ossetia, as well as by representatives
of international organisations and other significant
players in the peace process, representing
official positions of their governments or international
organisations (Davidson, Montville, 1981; Reimann,
2005).
From the methodological point of view, this is
an intrinsic case study. We conducted an analysis of
Russia’s role in the conflict transformation in South
Ossetia using the process analysis method (Stake,
1995). The primary sources are official documents
relating to the peace process in South Ossetia,
which are supplemented by professional literature
from the transformation of the separatist conflicts
in the Caucasus and the public statements of Russian,
South Ossetian, and Georgian politicians on
this issue. The text is structured as follows: first we
describe milestones in the official peace process in
South Ossetia, which is put into the context of the
development of Russian-Georgian relations, and
then we proceed to the analysis of internal changes
within the Russian Federation at the turn of the
millennium, which we see as crucial in demonstrating
the dynamics of the peace process. Then we try
to find a connection between this inner transformation
of Russia and the conflict transformation in
South Ossetia.
3.	 The course and outcome of the conflict
in South Ossetia
South Ossetia is a secessionist region in the northern
part of Georgia. It borders Russian North Ossetia
and occupies an area of 3,900 km2
. According
to the last Soviet census of 1989, there were 99,700
inhabitants in South Ossetia, of which 65,000 were
Ossetians (3), 26,000 Georgians and the rest minorities
from among Russians, Armenians, and
several smaller nations of the Caucasus (ICG Europe
Report No. 159). The armed phase of the war
lasted from January 1991 to June 1992 and resulted
in thousands of deaths, hundreds of missing
persons and large movements of the population.
The number of refugees due to the war in South
Ossetia differs from source to source. The lowest
estimate is 40,000 refugees, whereas the highest estimates
reach up to 100,000 displaced persons (4),
most of whom were Ossetian nationals who headed
to North Ossetia. About 10,000 Georgians left South
Ossetia for Georgia and 5,000 people are so-called
internally displaced persons inside South Ossetia.
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–71 57
The war ended on 23 June 1992 with the Sochi
Agreement. The main points of the agreement established
a ceasefire on 28 June 1992, the creation of a
Joint Control Commission composed of representatives
of Russia, Georgia, South Ossetia, North Ossetia
and representatives of the Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which was
to ensure peace in the region. The aim was to create
conditions for the return of refugees (Agreement
on Principles of Settlement of the Georgian – Ossetian
Conflict). Many dwellings and basic transport
and service infrastructures in the country had been
severely devastated. According to the Russian-Georgian
intergovernmental agreement on economic recovery
in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone on
14 September 1993, war damages amounted to 34.2
billion Russian roubles (about 260 million USD).
After the war, South Ossetia became a de facto
state, by which we mean a state entity that actually
exists – it has a certain population, an administrative
apparatus that is able to exercise supreme
legislative, executive, and judicial power (internal
sovereignty), and it has more or less well-defined
boundaries. What it largely lacks is external sovereignty,
i.e. the ability to build relationships with
other countries, and international recognition of its
independence (Kolossov, O’Loughlin, 1998; Pegg,
1998; Kolstø, 2006).
4.	Official peace process in South Ossetia
In the case of the separatist conflict in South Ossetia,
OSCE was among the first mediators. At the end
of 1992, the long-term mission of this organisation
in Georgia was established, primarily for the purpose
of mediating a peace treaty in the South Ossetian
conflict. Although OSCE did not participate
in the preparation and course of the negotiations,
which in the summer of 1992 resulted in a ceasefire
in the form of the Dagomys Agreement between
Tbilisi, Moscow, and Tskhinval(i), it was charged in
subsequent years with monitoring the activities of
the Joint Control Commission on the initiative of
the Georgian side. It strove for the presence of international
observers in the area as a means of offsetting,
at least partially, Russian dominance in the
peace activities.
The purpose of the negotiations conducted since
1994 has been to find a compromise that, on the one
hand, respects the sometimes changing demands of
Tskhinval(i), which demanded either full independence
or unification with a part of the Russian Federation,
North Ossetia, meaning joining Russia in
fact, and takes into account on the other the demand
by Tbilisi to maintain the territorial integrity
of the Georgian state. In 1995–1996 negotiations
between Tbilisi and Tskhinval(i) intensified through
the mediation of OSCE and Moscow. In May 1996,
both sides signed the Memorandum of Measures in
the Russian capital to ensure security and strengthen
mutual trust, with Eduard Shevardnadze and
the president of the unrecognised South Ossetian
Republic Ludwig Chibirov pledging, among other
things, to refrain from threats of violence while attempting
to settle their disputes and to take significant
steps towards the gradual demilitarisation of
the region (South Ossetian Joint Control Commission
Official Site, 1996). Some progress in relations
between the opposing parties was the gradual cease
of using alternative terms to refer to South Ossetia
(Shida Kartli or Samachablo), which, in accordance
with Georgian historiographical tradition, would
challenge Ossetian claims to the area.
Negotiations at the highest level were often accompanied
by the spontaneous return of Georgian
families to villages in South Ossetia. Their return
was often subject to the forced recognition of the
South Ossetian constitution. A positive factor was
undoubtedly the fact that Tbilisi did not apply
a blockade against South Ossetia; because of its favourable
location between the Russian North Caucasus
and the countries of the South Caucasus, this
region was convenient for smuggling, mainly cheap
alcohol into Russia and petrol into Georgia. According
to many witnesses, even units of the Joint
Control Commission were actively involved in this
lucrative business, especially officers of the Russian
peace contingent (Socor, 2006). Individual points of
the agreement should be specified in the coming
years. Despite a number of promising signals, talks
on establishing a status acceptable to both parties
ended in failure. Tbilisi insisted on the South Ossetians
dropping their demand for special relations
with North Ossetia, which the South Ossetians naturally
did not want to give up. According to Tbilisi,
this step could, under certain circumstances, preBrought
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–7158
pare the ground for challenging the territorial integrity
of Georgia. The closest breakthrough agreement
reached by the two parties occurred in Baden,
Austria (July 2000), whereby a draft intermediary
document was approved. This presupposed the recognition
of the territorial integrity of Georgia and
the acceptance of specific links between South Ossetia
and North Ossetia-Alania as part of the Russian
Federation; two, [the recognition] of attributes
of the future status of North Ossetia; and three, the
mechanism of international guarantees (Annual Report
2000 on OSCE Activities). The agreement of
Tbilisi on the future establishment of special links
between Vladikavkaz and Tskhinval(i), as well as
the presence of Russian troops in the area during
the coming years, was considered a major concession
by the Georgian side, which was meant to encourage
a South Ossetian-Georgian settlement on
the eve of the presidential elections in Georgia and
to reinforce Shevardnadze’s prospects for re-election
(ICG Europe Report No. 159).
Presidential elections took place in South Ossetia
at the end of 2001, and in place of moderate
Ludwig Chibirov, who was considered a ‘puppet
of Tbilisi’ by those South Ossetians seeking full independence,
power was seized by Eduard Kokoity
(Kokoyev), a South Ossetian businessman from
Russia with close ties to Moscow and senior Russian
generals. He quickly proclaimed that unification
with North Ossetia and reintegration with Russia
is the top priority of Tskhinval(i). Three years later
Mikhail Saakashvili, for whom a unified Georgia
represented a government priority, came to power
in Tbilisi. One of the first steps of Saakashvili’s government
was campaign on Batumi in the spring of
2004, where events played out precisely according to
Tbilisi’s scenario. As a result, local strongman Aslan
Abashidze, whose power was primarily based
on the presence of the Russian military base in Adjara,
was forced into exile in Moscow. The successful
recovery of Adjara was received with enthusiasm
in Georgia. The next step should have been the
long-desired restoration of South Ossetia and then
Abkhazia.
After the events in Adjara, a change occurred in
the Georgian attitude towards South Ossetia. Saakashvili
began to publicly present proposals for the
‘restoration’ of South Ossetia and the establishment
of autonomy with the widest possible rights and
extensive economic privileges in the perspective of
a federal and prosperous Georgia (Lynch, 2006: 39).
This rhetoric was also supported by concrete measures,
which were aimed at applying economic pressure
on South Ossetia. Already in the second half
of May 2004, Tbilisi strengthened checkpoints at the
administrative border with South Ossetia. The reason
for this step was to prevent smuggling, which
formed the basis of the South Ossetian economy.
The political pressure on Tskhinval(i) was ratcheted
up in parallel with economic pressure. Strengthening
Georgian armed forces in the region, however,
immediately wrung a diplomatic protest out of
Moscow and resulted in the intensive armament of
Ossetians. Tskhinval(i) flatly refused the peace initiative
of Tbilisi. The then commander of the Russian
contingent Vyacheslav Nabzdorov called the
actions of the Georgian Party a ‘dangerous provocation
that may have unpredictable consequences’
(Eurasia.net, 1 June 2004). Tempers flared as with
any typical escalation, which here included building
up the armed forces at both sides, intensifying the
‘diplomatic war’, and mutual shelling, which claimed
the lives of several civilians and soldiers on both
sides of the not-so-clearly defined front lines.
During the confrontation, Tskhinval(i) and Moscow
were creating a common front against Tbilisi.
Moscow immediately strengthened its South Ossetian
peace contingent with forty armoured vehicles
and other heavy weapons, according to the
Russian generals in line with the agreement concluded
with Tbilisi in advance. Several hundred volunteers
from Russian North Ossetia and Abkhazia,
as well as Russian Cossacks, headed for the South
Ossetian capital. In an effort to prevent the supply
of unsanctioned military equipment, fuel, and ammunition,
as well as militants from Russia, Georgia
urged OSCE to send observers to the Roki tunnel
that connects North and South Ossetia (News.ru,
31 July 2004). Moscow and Tskhinval(i), however,
accused the Georgian government of concentrating
3000 armed Georgians in Georgian villages near
Tskhinval(i). This number was supplied by Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose office then
sharply criticised provocative actions of the Georgian
side, which may ’trigger off uncontrollable violence
in South Ossetia’ (RIA Novosti, 11 July 2004).
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was
hardly in the background and in a speech to gradBrought
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–71 59
uates of the National Military Academy he pointed
to certain forces in the Russian political establishment
having an interest in the disintegration of
Georgia, and warned the public of extensive foreign
aggression. About possible Russian intervention, he
said, ‘Our opponents are not Ossetians or Abkhazians
... I do not wish that anyone draw Russia into
an armed confrontation with Georgia, but we must
be ready for anything. Our enemy is not 100–150
youths in Tskhinval(i)... Our enemy is the external
force that can invade Georgia to stop its integration
into NATO, stop the removal of foreign troops from
Georgia, halt the economic progress and prosperity
of every Georgian citizen.’ (Benediktov, 2004).
During this period of crisis in mid-2004, Moscow
became strongly involved and reinforced its
peace contingent in South Ossetia, despite protests
from Tbilisi, with those forty armoured vehicles and
other heavy weapons. The crisis culminated in the
summer of that year, when, after a series of killings
and abductions, Georgian troops acted and confiscated
160 unguided missiles of the Russian peace
contingent. The Ossetians then counterattacked,
disarming and imprisoning 50 Georgian peacekeepers,
whose peaceful status they questioned.
According to Georgian sources, a total of 16 Georgian
soldiers and an equal number of South Ossetian
militants and their reinforcements from the
north were killed during the armed clashes around
Tskhinval(i) that August (Civil.ge, 17 August 2004).
Ulrike Gruska puts the number killed in 2004 at
thirty and the number of wounded at eighty (Gruska,
2005: 38). At the moment of highest tension,
however, the terms of an interim agreement were
successfully negotiated with the return of weapons
and soldiers. In November 2004, an agreement on
demilitarising the conflict zone was signed in Sochi,
Russia, but this did not prevent a similar situation
from being repeated in the summer of the following
year. Cases of less intense shelling by both sides
in the area were reported between 2006 and 2007.
Important event for the peace process was a referendum
on the independence of South Ossetia,
which took place in November 2006. South Ossetian
information indicates that 95 % of the 55,000
registered voters took part in the elections, 99 %
of whom backed the independence of South Ossetia
from Georgia. It was held concurrently with
presidential elections that saw Eduard Kokoity become
the president of South Ossetia with 96 % of
the votes (Regnum.ru, 13 November 2006). Georgians
announced elections and a referendum in parallel.
Pro-Georgian Dmitry Sanakoyev was elected
governor of South Ossetia among ethnic Georgians
in South Ossetia (and Georgian refugees), while the
referendum approved of support for the territorial
integrity of Georgia. The years 2004-2006 were
a watershed in the peace process in South Ossetia,
and Georgian-South Ossetian relations have gradually
worsened since then.
The situation came to a head in 2008, when
both Russian and Georgian sides started accusing
each other of preparing for war. In July 2008
the Ossetian chief of police was killed, and Dmitry
Sanakoyev wounded and armed clashes became
ever more frequent. In August 2008, these clashes
escalated into heavy fighting. On 7 August the
Georgians launched a massive bombardment of
the Tskhinval(i) metropolis. The next day Russia
sent its forces into South Ossetia, which forced the
Georgians out of South Ossetia during the course
of three days. The war was ended with a six-point
plan presented by French President Sarkozy, whose
country held the presidency of the EU at the time.
This plan called for the immediate end of all military
action, the withdrawal of all troops to the positions
they held before the conflict began, and the
opening of discussions on the future status of South
Ossetia (Civil Georgia 12 August 2008). This proposal
was accepted by the Ossetians and Georgians,
although it should be noted that the Russian side
did not abide by the agreement and its units were
not withdrawn from Georgian territory until October
2008. As a result of the bombing of Tskhinval(i),
2,000 Ossetian civilians were killed. The Georgian
government says that during the conflict nearly
two hundred Georgian civilians lost their lives. According
to the UN, approximately 30,000 refugees
headed towards Russia, another 15,000 fled into the
interior of Georgia (Nichol, 2008). The greater part
of those who fled to Russia returned to South Ossetia
after the war. The war was followed by Russian
recognition of South Ossetia, which has become
highly dependent on Russia. Russian influence on
conflict transformation in South Ossetia, which we
consider to be quite decisive for the development
of the peace process, will be presented in the next
section.
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–7160
5.	Russian influence
on conflict transformation
in South Ossetia during the 1990s
Before 1991, all major events in the Caucasus were
controlled directly from the Kremlin. Even after the
collapse of the USSR, Moscow continued to remain
the centre of power, with strong political and economic
influence on the policy of the three newly
created Transcaucasian republics, but with one
significant difference. After more than a  hundred
years of hegemony, Russia was no longer the only
power regulating the political, economic and social
life in the South Caucasus region, and its influence
had to confront not only the governments of independent
countries formed following the collapse
of the USSR, but also other major players at this
time, which were primarily the USA, EU, Turkey,
Iran, and OSCE (Hoch, 2010). Despite this, Russia
played a variety of roles in the case of South Ossetia
in the 1990s. Based on the peace agreements signed
by representatives of Tbilisi and Tskhinval(i), Moscow
was given the role of mediator in peace talks
between Georgians and Ossetians. CIS peacekeepers,
consisting mostly of Russian soldiers, guarded
the border between South Ossetia and Georgia.
A supporting but nevertheless significant role was
keeping a watchful eye over the national interests
of the Russian Federation, where the unsettled political
status of South Ossetia remained one of the
key ways for Russia to influence Georgian policy,
as part of its smaller geopolitical influence, and in
the broader context of the entire South Caucasus
region.
After a brief period of Euro-Atlantic idealism at
the beginning of Boris Yeltsin’s government, Russian
foreign policy in late 1992 began to be dominated
by tendencies to emphasise the need for maintaining
ailing Russian hegemony in the post-Soviet
space. One of the most important tasks of Russian
foreign policy included regulating armed conflicts
throughout the post-Soviet space, preventing their
expansion into Russia, and protecting the rights of
Russian-speaking populations outside of RF (Roeder,
1997: 227). Seen in this light, the conflict in South
Ossetia became a security threat for Russia, which
could lead to a ‘spill-over effect’ in the North Caucasus.
The principles of Russian foreign policy in
March 1993 fully reflected the attitude of Russia on
its ‘near abroad’. The rhetoric of the president and
minister of defence and foreign affairs indicated that
the entire post-Soviet space would be perceived as
Russian’s sphere of influence, and called for the reintegration
of newly formed independent post-Soviet
republics into a structure where Russia would be
allowed to continue to play its historic role (Lough,
1993: 53-60). It was a clear attempt by Russia to
prevent a political and power vacuum in the South
Caucasus, which could be exploited by neighbouring
countries, as well as by the USA and the EU.
An obvious example of the gradual return from the
policy of ‘Westernism’ was the categorical requirement
of Moscow to have full control over peacekeeping
operations that took place on the territory
of the former USSR (5). At the same time, however,
the policy of potentially providing open support
for separatism in Georgia presented the Kremlin
elites with a difficult dilemma. Both South Ossetia
and Abkhazia originally had the status of autonomous
entities within Georgia, just like Chechnya
and Tatarstan, which threatened to declare their independence
from the newly created Russian Federation.
By providing official support for the political
independence of Sukhumi and Tskhinval(i), Russia’s
political and economic elite would be giving their
blessings to growing separatist tendencies within
their own territory.
A characteristic feature of Russian foreign policy
towards South Ossetia during the first half of the
1990s consisted, therefore, of considerable inconsistency
between the political declarations of leading
officials, who used every possible occasion to
speak out on the observance of strict neutrality and
the principle of the territorial integrity of Georgia,
and on realpolitik, which oscillated from relative
neutrality to de facto support for separatists. It is
from this period that there arose the popular belief
in Georgia that the war was not conducted with Ossetia,
but with Russia, and South Ossetia was only
the means with which to implement its expansive
power politics. The genesis of the relations between
Tbilisi and Moscow occurred mainly at the beginning
of the 1990s in an extraordinarily dynamic and
complicated environment. The strongly nationalistic
policies under the government of Zviad Gamsachurdia
were replaced in Georgia by the reality of
civil war and absolute decentralisation of power afBrought
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–71 61
ter the return of Eduard Shevardnadze. Especially
during the key years 1991-1993, it was not possible
to speak of a clear, rational, and centrally conceived
foreign policy in Georgia. The same can be said in
the case of Russia, where in the first few months
after the failed coup d’etat by conservative forces in
August 1991. As the Russian Federation was being
born, a major change in personnel occurred in the
organs responsible for the development and effective
implementation of foreign policy, followed by
the collapse of the entire administration, controlled
for decades by the Communist Party. Also, President
Yeltsin was faced with a number of serious
internal political and economic problems, considerably
limiting his interest in foreign policy during
this time. The result was the absence of a clear foreign
concept towards war-torn Georgia (Malcolm,
Pravda, 1996). These events led to a situation where
the commanding officers of Russian bases on Georgian
territory were able to arbitrarily intervene in
the conflict. Not surprisingly, it was at the turn of
1991-1992 when an impressive number of weapons,
including heavy equipment, were discovered in the
hands of the two fighting parties (Demetriou, 2002:
9-10). Rather than a long-term plan prepared by the
Kremlin, it is possible to find behind these events
the initiative of Russian commanders to promote
separatism against a regime that was anxious to
close ‘their’ bases, or officers who saw the chance
in the chaos to sell off part of their equipment and
therefore earn some extra money for an uncertain
future. Moreover, the foreign policy of Russia under
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrei Vladimirovich
Kozyrev, was still very liberal and pro-Western
at that time.
In May 1992, the hawks again appeared on the
scene and triggered a political offensive against
Kozyrev and his liberal tendencies. By the end of
summer, the Foreign Ministry began to definitely
lose its footing and the Army initiated its own
military and foreign policy operations, not only in
Georgia but also in many other post-Soviet countries,
including Moldova and Tajikistan. In this context,
the turn of 1992 and 1993 can be described as
the period when the short era of liberal foreign policy
in Russia, which never got the opportunity to
fully develop amidst the general degradation and
chaos, was over. The control of the articulation and
implementation of the foreign policy of the Russian
Federation fell again, to a certain extent, into the
hands of security forces. At the beginning of 1993,
Russian foreign policy began to take on a realistic
character again, where developments in Georgia
proved to be crucial for Russia in terms of its
rediscovered need to maintain powerful influence
in the Caucasus region. The roots of these fundamental
foreign policy changes, therefore, need to be
searched for in the changing internal political and
power situation in Russia, when Yeltsin was striving
to stay in power following the catastrophic collapse
of the economy and a sharp decline in his popularity.
He broke with his liberal colleagues and became
increasingly surrounded by people with conservative
backgrounds.
If the development of the conflict in South Ossetia
is placed in the context of Russian internal
political relations, it is clear that Georgia’s loss of
control over the secessionist regions came in handy
for Moscow. The nationalist discourse of the first
Georgian President Zviad Gamsachurdia and his
successor Eduard Shevardnadze pulled Georgia further
away from the orbit of the Russian sphere of
influence. The unsettled conflict in South Ossetia,
the intensification of fighting in Abkhazia and the
outbreak of mass pro-Gamsachurdia uprisings in
western Georgia, culminating in civil war in September-November
1993, led Shevardnadze to seek
cooperation with Moscow. Yeltsin answered Shevardnadze’s
request for Russian help by saying that as
long as Georgia remained outside of the Commonwealth
of Independent States  (CIS) and would not
allow Russian troops to remain on its territory, Russia
would not solve its internal problems (Cornell,
2001: 173). As the unrest from the civil war crept
closer to Tbilisi, the problem was so serious that the
acceptance of the Russian ultimatum appeared to be
the only way out of an otherwise hopeless situation.
Following the signing of the agreement on Russian
troops remaining in Georgia (9 October 1993)
and the agreement on accession of Georgia to CIS
(20 October 1993), Moscow quickly intervened in
late October and early November 1993 and helped
Shevardnadze to suppress the revolt in western
Georgia in only fourteen days (Kopeček, 2010: 103).
Despite these events, it cannot be claimed that
Russia expressed consistent support of secessionist
entities throughout the 1990s in an unofficial capacity.
Around the mid-1990s the Kremlin replaced
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–7162
its unofficial support for separatists with efforts to
achieve greater rapprochement with Georgia. This
can be explained by two factors. First, there was
the First Chechen War in 1994-1996, resulting in
de facto Chechen independence and disrupting
the territorial integrity of Russia, which threatened
to escalate into problems in other regions of the
North Caucasus. And secondly, Georgia joined CIS
in 1994 and accepted Russian military garrisons on
Georgian soil on the basis of a Collective Security
Treaty (CST). In return for this rapprochement in
relations with Russia, Georgia expected the Kremlin
to support Georgian efforts to recover control over
South Ossetia. Under these conditions, the potential
for Russia to continue to support the separatist
movements in the South Caucasus was significantly
reduced.
For the Russians, the suspension of aid to South
Ossetia was the rational outcome of a situation
where Russia maintained its position as the mediator
of the conflict and at the same time kept the
door open for influence in South Ossetia while
keeping Georgia’s foreign policy from becoming too
pro-Western. Another possible explanation for the
inconsistency of complete Russian support for South
Ossetia, or for helping Georgia to restore its territorial
integrity, was a lack of unity among the centres
of power in the Russian Federation. This inconsistency
stemmed not only from the breadth of the role
that Russia assumed in the case of South Ossetia,
but mainly from the fact that in Russia during the
1990s there was far from any one centre of power.
The major centres of power in relation to the Georgian
secessionist entities included the Office of President
of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Ministry of Defence, the secretariats of the
political parties represented in the Duma, and the
regional elites of individual entities in the Russian
Federation (RF). Influential lobby groups connected
to individual members of the government also
played an important role. Among the most significant
were the oil and gas giants Lukoil, Transneft,
and Gazprom. Russian policy in the region could
not, therefore, be determined by only official state
policy, but also by the policies of the largest companies
and other powerful groups, which often had
contradictory interests and would lead to the abovementioned
heterogeneity of Russian policy towards
the South Caucasus bubbling to the surface.
6.	Turnaround in Russian
foreign policy towards Georgia
with the onset of Vladimir Putin
The rise to power of Vladimir Putin, who in 1999
changed his post of the Federal Security Service
(FSB) head to become the Prime Minister of the
Russian Federation, ended the existence of multiple
centres of power within the Russian Federation
in relation to the South Caucasus. The role of the
Duma, the Army, and regional elites was diminished
while powerful decision-making mechanisms
became more centralised under the control of the
President and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The coherent
and unified picture of Russian foreign policy
towards the South Caucasus was also connected
to a more assertive Russian attitude towards Georgia.
This turnaround was qualified by a number of
factors.
The first factor was the above-mentioned political
centralisation which took place at all levels in
Russia after Putin assumed power. First, the power
of oligarchs Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky,
and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who possessed enormous
economic and political influence during the
1990s, and who also represented a serious obstacle
to the centralisation of power in the hands of the
president, was effectively broken. Putin also managed
to push through the centralisation of the Russian
federal system and thus weakened existing local
centres of power, creating seven Federal Districts
headed by the appointed representatives of the president.
The centralisation of power was finally topped
off with the crushing victory of the United Russia
party in parliamentary elections in 2003. Through
the parties controlling the State Duma, the last impediment
preventing Putin from creating a centralised
authoritarian regime in the country fell away.
An authoritarian government which does not feel
threatened in domestic politics is much more confident
in promoting its foreign policy. President Putin
and the state apparatus appointed by him acquired
almost unquestioned superiority in Russia at the
expense of democratic pluralism. Popescu (2006)
presents the interesting paradox that the state apparatus
tried to look very fragile on the outside while
at the same time significantly strengthening its position.
The then head of the Office of the President
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–71 63
Dmitry Medvedev said in April 2005 that Russia as
a state would disappear if they were unable to consolidate
the elites (Expert, 4 April 2005). By systematically
building up the image of a fragile Russia,
faced with the existential threat of Islamic terrorists
and West-inspired revolutions, officials managed to
concentrate virtually all the power into their hands
(Popescu, 2006: 6).
The political centralisation went hand in hand
with a significant improvement in the Russian economy.
During 1991-1999 Russia experienced a decline
in its GDP by 30%. In the following decade, Russian
economy started to show stable economic growth,
with real GDP in the first decade of the 21st
century
growing at an average annual rate of 6.9% (Cooper,
2009). The major inflow of cash was in particular
the result of high oil and gas prices, which represent
the backbone of Russian economy. Despite the
fact that this factor clearly increased Moscow’s material
and financial capacity to promote its assertive
foreign policy, there is no automatically direct correlation
between the high price of raw materials and
expansionist foreign policy. However, when the official
documents and statements of Russian officials
in the Kremlin at the beginning of the new millennium
are analysed, it seems that in this case, a link
between the increased output of the Russian economy
as a result of the increase in world oil and natural
gas prices and the growth in the foreign policy
assertiveness of the Russian Federation can actually
be made. The Russian Foreign Policy Concept of
2000 says that Russia’s ability to face the challenges
of foreign policy is limited due to limited resources
for the support of Russian foreign policy, leading to
difficulty in advancing the economic interests of the
RF abroad. The same concept also declares that the
highest priority of Russian foreign policy is to create
favourable external conditions for the sustainable
economic development of Russia (The Foreign
Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, 2000).
Four years later, Vladimir Putin said that ‘economic
growth, political stability and strengthening the
state have a favourable impact on the international
position of Russia’ (Vladimir Putin’s annual address
to the Federal Assembly, 26 May 2004). And
in 2005, the rhetoric of President Vladimir Putin
took on even more self-assurance when he said:
‘It is certain that Russia should continue its civilizing
mission on the Eurasian continent’ (Vladimir
Putin’s annual address to the Federal Assembly,
25 April 2005). The Foreign Policy Concept of the
Russian Federation of 2008 continued in the trend
for greater involvement in foreign policy and the
promotion of interests in the near abroad. ‘Russia
will strive to build strong positions of authority in
the world community that best meet the interests
of the Russian Federation as one of influential centers
in the modern world, and which are necessary
for the growth of its political, economic, intellectual
and spiritual potential’ (The Foreign Policy Concept
of the Russian Federation, 2008). The same document
explicitly mentioned relationship to NATO
enlarged to include new members of the post-Soviet
space. ‘Russia maintains its negative attitude towards
the expansion of NATO, notably to the plans
of admitting Ukraine and Georgia to the membership
in the alliance, as well as to bringing the NATO
military infrastructure closer to the Russian borders
on the whole, which violates the principle of equal
security, leads to new dividing lines in Europe and
runs counter to the tasks of increasing the effectiveness
of joint work in search for responses to real
challenges of our time’ (The Foreign Policy Concept
of the Russian Federation, 2008).
The third factor leading to a more assertive Russian
policy towards Georgia was the need for the
Kremlin to strengthen its influence over the South
Caucasus for fear the USA and the EU would gain
greater influence in the region. Since the second
half of the 1990s, the USA and the EU have begun
to vigorously promote their economic interests
in this area (Hoch, 2011: 75-77). In 1994, a major
oil contract was signed between Azerbaijan and ten
major Western oil companies for exploring the Azerbaijani
sector of the Caspian Sea. The agreement
also included the building of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
oil pipeline, which would be used to export Azerbaijan
oil to the EU and the USA. In 1998, the
US National Security Strategy argued for the full
integration of certain areas of CIS into Western
economic and political structures (Clinton, 1998:
37-40). CST and CIS member countries did not integrate
their foreign and security policy, which lead
Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan to withdraw
from the collective security treaty in 1999. In this
context, it is necessary to approach Transcaucasia
as part of the strategically larger, very important
Caucasus-Central Asia macroregion. If Central
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–7164
Asia were to become a potential competitor to Russia
as an alternative supplier of oil and especially of
natural gas to the West, it would have to possess
a network of oil and gas pipelines bypassing Russian
territory. From the supply side, the key country
for the east-west corridor in the South Caucasus
appears to be Azerbaijan, possessing, among others,
the Shah Deniz oil field with the potential to
independently supply Nabucco in the early stages
of putting it into service. Azerbaijan, finding longterm
stability outside the Russian orbit of power,
could also potentially act as a bridge across the
Caspian Sea en route from the Central Asian oil
fields to European markets. Central Asian gas and
oil, however, has to cross one of two final countries
on the way to Europe – Armenia or Georgia.
However, Armenia is long-term politically, militarily,
and economically dependent on Moscow. Due
to the continuing conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh,
the construction of any gas pipeline from Azerbaijan,
which would make Armenia a transit country
and therefore contribute to its state budget, is unthinkable.
In this situation, where Azerbaijan has
been independent of Russia, Georgia becomes the
key country in the matter of exporting raw material
from Central Asia. The construction of the BTE
gas pipeline and BTC oil pipeline from Azerbaijan
to Turkey are the first steps towards creating an alternative
oil and gas pipeline corridor to Europe.
Georgia’s pro-Western orientation, supplemented
by Nabucco project represent a potential economic
threat for Moscow, enabling the penetration of competition
into the European markets for oil and natural
gas (Norling, 2007).
We consider the fourth factor in the more assertive
approach of Russia towards Georgia to be
the significant deterioration in Russian-Georgian
relations after the outbreak of the Second Chechen
War. The Georgians gave Chechen fleeing war zones
in the Pankisi valley the refugee status and consequently
the Kremlin accused Shevardnadze of supporting
Chechen terrorism and of unwillingness to
restore order in the Pankisi valley (New York Times,
12 September 2002). It was precisely from the Pankisi
valley where supposedly in July 2002 a group
of Chechen rebels from the Georgian side attacked
a squad of Russian border guards, killing eight of
them in the attack. In response to this act, Russian
airplanes bombed the valley on the Georgian side
of the border in August 2002, which killed at least
one civilian. The events of the summer of 2002 provoked
a sharp diplomatic conflict between Moscow
and Tbilisi (Kleveman, 2003: 35-36). The first wave
of cooling in relations between Moscow and Tbilisi
had already occurred in late 1999 and early 2000,
when, in our view, the Russian charge of supporting
Chechen terrorists was only representative of
the gradual cooling of relations between Russia and
Georgia. We rather see the real reason in the growing
pro-Western leaning of Georgia. Negotiations
over the above-mentioned Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline were in full swing in 1999, as well as other
forms of economic cooperation between Georgia
and the EU countries and the USA. In 1994, Georgia
joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace, signed an
Individual Partnership Plan in 1996, and in 1998
Georgia opened a permanent diplomatic mission
and embassy to NATO. Georgian leaders tried to
use greater cooperation with the West as a way to
balance the influence of Russia, which in the second
half of the 1990s it considered the main cause of instability
in the region (Devdariani, 2005: 167-73).
In 1999, Georgia instigated pressure for the withdrawal
of Russian military garrisons from the country
at a meeting of representatives of OSCE in
Istanbul. The question of their removal was mentioned
in the media and on the floor of the Georgian
Parliament as back as in 1995. Despite the
agreement between the political leaders of Georgia
and Russia in Istanbul in 1999, where Russia
committed to remove its bases in Vaziani, Gudauta,
Batumi, and Akhalkalaki, the process of evacuating
Russian troops did not take place for a long
time. Until the arrival of Mikhail Saakashvili’s administration,
the only base closed was Vaziani. Discussions
about a timetable for the transfer of the
remaining three bases were stuck at a standstill for
several years. While after the fall of the Berlin Wall
Russian troops were removed from Eastern Europe
within two years, the Russian scenarios for withdrawing
from Georgia are looking at eleven years,
which smacked of an obvious attempt to maintain
influence in Georgia up until an alternative solution
is found (Civil Georgia, 30 January 2003).
The fifth important factor can be identified as
the suppression of Chechen separatism. While Russia
was preoccupied in the 1990s with the fear of instability
from Georgia’s de facto states spreading to
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–71 65
the North Caucasus, that fear disappeared after the
Second Chechen War. It ended in 2000 with the defeat
of Chechen political separatism and the establishment
of direct Russian control of Chechnya. In
June 2000, Vladimir Putin appointed Ahmad Kadyrov
as the interim head of a pro-Moscow government,
and three years later the Constitution of the
Republic of Chechnya, which guaranteed Chechnya
a high degree of autonomy, was approved, but
it was tightly bound to the Russian administrative
system, especially in the person of Ahmad Kadyrov
and later his son Ramzan. Chechen rebels still
continue to pose a certain security risk for the internal
stability of the Russian Federation, but the
government and president of Chechnya have since
significantly grown and support the administration
of the ruling Putin-Medvedev duo. The Chechen
factor that forced at least neutral relations between
Russia and Georgia during the nineties had lost its
importance (6).
7.	Impacts of changes in Russian-Georgian
relations and internal changes
in the Russian Federation
on conflict transformation
in South Ossetia
The consequences of the five factors above, namely
the political centralisation within the Russian Federation,
economic growth, the involvement of the
West in the South Caucasus, the deterioration in
Russian-Georgian relations, and the suppression of
threats of Chechen separatism, has led to ever more
significant changes in the Russian approach to South
Ossetia since 2000. Russia officially ended its isolationist
policy towards this de facto state, opened its
borders, and introduced visas for Georgians, while
there is no visa programme for ­Ossetians.
Since the citizens of South Ossetia reject Georgian
sovereignty, which means they are not citizens
of any country, Moscow justified its position
of granting Russian citizenship en masse to the inhabitants
of this de facto state as a humanitarian
gesture, the aim of which was to enable economic
activity associated with travel by people who would
otherwise be unable to travel abroad (Socor, 2002).
In the background of this step is the obvious Kremlin
effort to strengthen Russian influence in South
Ossetia. Now that more than 90% of the population
of South Ossetia are citizens of the Russian Federation,
Russia has the legal basis for politically intervening
in the affairs of South Ossetia, and Moscow
at that time did not dispute this fact in any way.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took this
line in 2006 when he said: ‘In relation to the citizens
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, we will defend
the rights of our citizens by all means at our disposal.
I would not recommend anyone to threaten
the life and dignity of our citizens’ (Echo of Moscow,
20 July 2006).
Russia offers a considerable degree of political
and diplomatic support to the political representatives
of South Ossetia and often acts as the only
bridge between them and Western institutions.
Most summits devoted to issues of security, political
status, and economic relations take place in
Moscow, while the leaders of South Ossetia were
accepted at the highest levels of state long before
Russian recognition of the independence of this de
facto state. The shift in the position of Moscow in
relation to Tskhinval(i) is also reflected in the official
terminology, and since 2005 the Russian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs has referred to the politicians
of this de facto state as president, prime minister
and ministers, something which the Georgian political
representation has often protested against (e.g.
Regnum.ru, 20 September 2005). The moment the
title ‘de facto’ disappeared from the designation of
official representatives of the secessionist republics
can be described as the informal recognition of the
secessionist entities by the Kremlin. Russian officials
also take part in public holidays in the unrecognised
entities and in their military parades. One
of the most important examples was the official attendance
of major Russian political leaders during
a military parade on South Ossetian Independence
Day in Tskhinval(i) on 20 September 2005. This parade
was attended by members of the State Duma,
mostly representatives of the ruling party, as well as
several representatives of the RF government and
local governments of autonomous entities of the RF
(Civil Georgia, 21 September 2005). The attendance
of a large number of official representatives of the
Russian Federation at such events can be seen as
a gesture of unequivocal support for secessionist regions,
negating Russia’s declared role as a mediator
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–7166
in the peace process and peace broker in the region.
The meeting of RF officials with representatives
of the government in South Ossetia was more
than a friendly visit, and the Georgian side was not
informed about any of them in advance (7). This
political and diplomatic support is reflected in statements
made by South Ossetian politicians, who have
started to more and more gravitate towards their
northern neighbour. When in July 2005 Georgian
President Saakashvili announced a new peace plan
for South Ossetia, offering South Ossetia broad autonomy
that consisted of demilitarisation, economic
reconstruction, and a political settlement for its
status, the South Ossetian side immediately swept
this proposal off the table. The president of South
Ossetia Eduard Kokoity issued a statement in October
2005, where he said: ‘We South Ossetians are
citizens of Russia’ (CEDR, 7 October 2005). Moreover,
most of the population of South Ossetia had
a Russian passport at that time and regularly voted
in Russian parliamentary and presidential elections.
Before the Russian presidential elections in 2004,
a poster proclaiming ‘Putin is our president’ could
be seen on every street corner in South Ossetia.
Russia has not confined its support for the interests
of South Ossetia to the political and diplomatic
arena. Also significant is its support for security
and economic cooperation, which has gained in importance
since 2005, and after Russian recognition
of its independence is highly visible. South Ossetia
is so dependent on Russia for its economy and security
that it is debatable whether it is still considered
as a de facto state with internal sovereignty,
or whether its position makes it closer to a puppet
state (more on this topic: Pegg, 1998: 35-36).
Many basic economic indicators such as inflation
and GDP per capita are kept secret by the local authorities,
but some things about the dependency of
South Ossetia on Russia can be derived from data
on its direct budget support, which was first published
in 2010. The state budget of South Ossetia
in 2010 was 4.3 billion roubles (140 million USD),
but only 2.4 million USD were collected in taxes in
South Ossetia (ICG Report N°205: 4). Direct budget
support came to 98.7% of the South Ossetian budget.
In 2011 and 2012 the direct budget support of
South Ossetia was 2.537 billion roubles. In 2013 the
inflow of Russian funds into South Ossetia is expected
to fall to 1.68 billion roubles (Georgia Times,
21 October 2011). Russia has provided large sums
of aid to help South Ossetia recover from the destruction
wrought by the August War, about 28,000
USD per person according to the Russian Deputy
Minister of Regional Development (Kolossov,
O’Loughlin, 2011). The ICG estimated the figure
at 840 million USD in the two years since the war
(ICG Europe Report No. 205: i).
Another aspect of Russian economic aid are payments
made to the approximately 20,000 pensioners
of South Ossetia. Since 2006, a branch of the Russian
Pension Fund has been located in Tskhinval(i).
If we add to this the fact that Russia fully funds the
police, state security forces and Russian businessmen,
and politicians and members of the military
and secret services account for more than half of
the members of the government (8), it is clear that
Russian support for South Ossetia is absolutely necessary
for maintaining at least a limited form of independent
existence.
These facts were completely reflected at the
end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 after the second
round of presidential election in South Ossetia.
The  victor was Alla Dzhioeva, the former minister
of education in the cabinet of President Eduard
Kokoity, who introduced a series of reforms in
this position with the goal of bringing the education
system of South Ossetia closer to the Russian
school system. Although she was a supporter of the
union of North and South Ossetia in the Russian
Federation, she was not the favourite of the Kremlin.
Putin’s garniture decided to officially bless the
nomination of Anatoly Bibilov, a Russian and later
South Ossetian officer, serving since 2008 in the
post of minister for emergency situations. Shortly
before the elections, none other than then President
Medvedev flew in to wish him success. It is therefore
not surprising that the victory of Alla Dzhioeva
in the second round of the presidential election
was not just an embarrassment for the Kremlin, but
could indirectly indicate the resistance of ordinary
South Ossetians against the Kremlin meddling in
the internal political affairs of South Ossetia, or at
least signal considerable political independence of
the breakaway region and its elites from the bidding
of the Kremlin. South Ossetian authorities supported
by Moscow responded immediately by nullifying
the election on charges that Alla Dzhioeva’s team
committed large-scale electoral fraud. New elections
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–71 67
with Dzhioeva banned from running were scheduled
for March 2012. When the winner of the election
still decided to undergo official inauguration
in February, she was arrested and beaten in prison
and had to be hospitalised and forcibly kept in the
hospital until the March elections (Dzutsev, 2012).
The events of February 2012 showed the true limits
of South Ossetian independence under Russian
auspices. Even though this provoked a wave of indignation
and resistance in Ossetian society, key
supporters of Alla Dzhioeva were sentenced to several
years in the FSB prison in Vladikavkaz despite
the fact that the presidential chair in Tskhinval(i)
was occupied by the Kremlin’s candidate, the former
head of the local KGB Leonid Tibilov. In this context,
the most publicised case was that of political
analyst Soslan Kokoev, who in an interview with
Radio Liberty News in December 2011 said that
the result of the intensive intervention in the internal
political affairs of South Ossetia was that the
fiercely loyal Ossetians started to hate Russia, and if
this trend continued, they would begin to fix their
eyes rather on the West. And so Kokoev was later
accused by FSB of possessing narcotics and illegal
arms, which is a popular method used in the North
Caucasus republics (Tsiklauri, 2012). Kokoev’s relatives
claim that this major supporter of Dzhioeva
was infected with hepatitis in prison but has been
long denied the necessary medical care (Georgia
Times, 23 July 2012). We therefore consider Russian
influence to be quite decisive not only for the
development of the peace process in South Ossetia,
but also for internal and foreign political developments
of this de facto state.
8.	Conclusions
In general, the two main objectives of de facto states
can be considered keeping their de facto independence
and striving to gain international recognition.
To achieve these objectives, the support of external
actors are very important. At present, South Ossetia
is very isolated by the international community. This
isolation forces this unrecognised state to rely on a
patron state to protect its interests. In the case of
South Ossetia, this is Russia, which a few years before
recognising the independence of South Ossetia
gave passports to its inhabitants, paid out local pensions
and made significant contributions to its state
budget. And most importantly, it provided security
guarantees that came to be fully felt in August 2008,
when Russia did not hesitate to demonstrate its support
for separatists by sending its own armies into
conflict with Georgia. Political, diplomatic, military
and economic assistance from the patron state are
very closely linked together and constitute a major
guarantee for South Ossetia’s security and the opportunity
to keep the economy and social system at
an acceptable level. In return for the necessary economic
and political support from Russia, politicians
are loyal to its interests, which reduces the real decision-making
capacity of local politicians and their
desire to look at all the options for a common solution
to the conflict with Georgia.
While during the nineties and at the turn of the
millennia Russia was on the defensive and trying
to preserve, rather than expand, the remnants of
its influence in the South Caucasus, political centralisation,
increased economic revenue from oil,
and the end of the Second Chechen War allowed
it to act more assertively towards not only Georgia,
but generally to other countries in the near
abroad. Dmitry Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow
Think-Tank Centre argues that: ‘The Russian leadership
came to the conclusion that the withdrawal
has ended, and it is time to counter-attack… it
is time to re-establish a great power and that the
CIS is the space where Russian economic, political,
and informational dominance should be established’
(Popescu, 2006: 7).
This approach is reflected in conflict transformation
in South Ossetia, where Russia is not an independent
arbiter, but is pursuing objectives that
primarily serve its own interests. From this perspective,
Russia is satisfied with having the conflict in
deep freeze and with limited recognition of South
Ossetia. This way, Moscow maintains economic and
political influence throughout the region and keeps
applying pressure for its military to remain in the
area. The failure to resolve the conflict and the current
geopolitical situation has, moreover, precluded
any possibility of Georgia joining NATO in the near
future and restricted any greater integration with
the West. Russian influence in this conflict transformation
is leading to the gradual strengthening of
a separatist regime on the one hand, and the weakBrought
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–7168
ening of the mother country on the other. By doing
this, Russia is not only creating an environment
where any solution to the conflict is virtually impossible,
but is also unattractive for the government of
South Ossetia. Russian support for South Ossetia
has allowed this de facto state over the past twenty
years to survive integration pressures from Georgia,
whose territorial integrity was moreover supported
by the international community. It has actually allowed
to move more and more away from Georgia
in its developmental trajectories and to become
more and more closer to Russia.
Notes
(1)	 Ossetians call their capital Tskhinval. Georgians
give the traditional Georgian suffix ‘i’ to it. In
an effort to avoid the designation of taking one
side or the other, we designate the capital of
South Ossetia in our text with a neutral variant
Tskhinval(i).
(2)	 Informal activities parallel with official diplomatic
negotiations, which are usually implemented
by the private or non-profit sector.
They are usually manifested by organising informal
seminars leading to peace-building and
mutual trust between the conflicting parties
(Azar, Burton 1986; Galtung, 1996).
(3)	 Ossetians were not concentrated only in their
autonomous republic, but the greater part of
them (98,000) were scattered across other regions
of Georgia.
(4)	 The lower figure is based on data from UNHCR
(estimations as of 1998). According to UNHCR
Tbilisi, 30,000 Ossetians from Georgia proper
registered in North Ossetia as refugees, while
10,000 from South Ossetia became ‘de facto
refugees’ in North Ossetia. Officials of UNHCR
Vladikavkaz consider that in 1995 there
were some 55,000 persons in North Ossetia displaced
by the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict.
The 100,000 figure is used by North Ossetia officials
(ICG Europe Report No. 159, pp. 5)
(5)	 For example, when the UN tried to deploy an
armed contingent of peacekeepers in Abkhazia,
the original mandate of the units, which should
be fully equipped with competencies and military
equipment (UN Security Council Resolution
No. 858/1993), had to be under Russian
pressure amended by Resolution No. 881/1993,
which meant sending an observer mission only
to monitor events in Abkhazia and the activities
of CIS peacekeeping units. Russia expressed
its reluctance to have a foreign military contingent
in the ‘near abroad’, by which it would lose
its privileged position in this area.
(6)	 Even after the pacification of Chechnya, the failure
to resolve the conflicts in Georgia continues
to create conditions for insurgency on the territory
of Russia. There is Dagestan in particular,
and in recent years the regions of the once
stable and modernised Northwest Caucasus, inhabited
mainly by ethnic Adyghe, find themselves
spiralling into destabilisation. Georgia
dealt Russia a political blow when in May 2011
it officially recognised the genocide of the Adyghe
nation by the Russian Empire in the 19th
century. This action provoked an even greater
response among Adyghe elites, demanding
a  similar act of recognising genocide by the
Russian Federation. The Federation, however,
cannot afford to do so, since such an act would
later be used to recover some of the territory
originally inhabited by Adyghe tribes. The unwillingness
to accept these demands, however,
increases dissatisfaction among the Adyghe
ethnic groups who make up part of the population
of the Northwest Caucasus. After the pacification
of Chechnya in 2001, when the rest
of the North Caucasus still showed no signs of
future destabilisation, this factor did, however,
play its role to a significant degree.
(7)	 To name but few examples of this type of ‘highlevel’
meetings, the following cases are noteworthy:
meetings of the de facto President Kokoity
with President Vladimir Putin of the Russian
Federation (two occasions reported) and with
the following figures: Russian Minister of Foreign
Affairs – Sergey Lavrov; Moscow City Mayor
– Yuri Lujkov; Vice-speakers of the Russian
State Duma – Vladimir Jirinovski and Sergey
Baburin; Chairman of the Committee of International
Affairs of the State Duma-Konstantin
Kosachev; Chairman of the Committee of CIS
Matters and Contacts with the Emigrant of State
Duma – Andrey Kokoshin; Chairman of the
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Tomáš Hoch, Emil Souleimanov, Tomáš Baranec / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 23 (2014): 53–71 69
Communist party of Russia – MP Genady Ziuganov;
Chairman of the Russian political party
‘Rodina’ (Family) – MP Dimitry Rogozin; Deputy
Chairman of the Russian political party ‘Rodina’
– MP Aleksey Mitrofanov; Leaders of the
North Caucasus republics: Teimuraz Mamsurov
(North Ossetia – Alania, Russia) Mustapha
Batdiev (Karachai-Cherkess, Russia), Arsen
Kanokov (Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia) and Alu
Alkhanov (Chechnia, Russia); Governor of the
Krasnodar Oblast – Aleksander Tkachov; Leaders
of Cossack organizations operating in Russia,
including the high military Cossack leader
Viktor Lododatski. Beside these ad hoc visits/meetings
mentioned above, Dimitry Medoev
is present in Moscow as the South Ossetia’s
permanent representative in the Russian Federation.
Finally, Mr. Kokoity and other proxy
leaders hold joint press-conferences in Russia,
and Mr. Kokoity himself is a frequent guest of
official circles in Russia (Government of Georgia
2008: Interview with Heidi Tagliavini).
(8)	 The major figures in South Ossetia, who held
important positions in the Russian state administration
and subsequently served or are
still serving in important political positions in
South Ossetia include Defence Minister Anatoly
Barankevich, head of the security committee
Anatoly Iavoroi, Prime Minister Aslanbek
Bulatsev, Chairman of the office of the president
of South Ossetia Alexandr Bolshakov, Defence
Minister Yuri Tanaev, Interior Minister
Mikhail Mindzaiev, etc.
Acknowledgement
Tomáš Hoch would like to thank for research
funding support to Moravian-Silesian Region Programme
of Support to Research and Development
in the Region (contract number 01841/2012/RRC).
Emil Souleimanov carried out this study in the
framework of the Program P17 ‘Sciences on Society,
Politics, and Media’ at the Faculty of Social Sciences,
Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.
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