A separatist area in yet another nation once under Soviet rule is set to vote on joining the Russian Federation amidst their ongoing illegal invasion of Ukraine. South Ossetia, an area in the nation of Georgia whose northern boundary borders Russia, has set a vote to join the Federation on July 17, satisfying a promise its leader made in March to take the legal actions necessary to join up with the nation, according to the Associated Press.
“We did it!” South Ossetian leader Anatoly Bibilov wrote. “In legalese, we fulfilled yet one more crucial lawful demand. And in normal language, we took a life-altering action– we are going home, we are going to Russia.”
Russia has been enjoying de facto military control over South Ossetia since engaging in a brief war with Georgia in 2008. The majority of the globe considers the region to be the sovereign territory of Georgia, but a few nations, including Russia, Belarus, and other unrecognized Moscow allies like Transnistria (a breakaway region of Moldova bordering Ukraine) and Abkhazia (another breakaway region of Georgia), see it as an independent state.
Georgia as well as Moldova, with its pre-existing territorial conflicts with Russia, sent applications to join the European Union on March 3, just a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, seemingly goaded by Putin’s action.
Some world leaders have promoted the notion of land swaps to bring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to an end. French President Emmanuel Macron urged Ukraine to provide concessions to Russia to end the war and “to aid Putin save his face,” Ukrainian Head of state Volodymyr Zelensky stated, yet Zelensky also noted that Ukraine was “not ready to help someone to save something and lose our territories for it.” Historically this would be akin to asking France to give Alsace-Lorraine back to Germany.
Tens of thousands of people have died and millions of Ukrainians have been displaced since the start of the war which has devastated the Eastern European nation that was once considered one of the rising powers in the former Iron Curtain, with a bright and prosperous future ahead of it steeped in Kyiv’s rich culture and history. Today parts of Kyiv and several Ukrainian cities lie in ruins.
