I said at the time that the lesson of Bill Clinton's intervention was that treaties do not matter, and the only guarantee of a nations sovereignty would now be nuclear weapons.
The guys has ABSOLUTELY no idea what is he talking about. To start with, there was no right for the autonomous republics to remove themselves from republics consisting USSR. The secessionist clause was only found in the USSR constitution, which dealt with 15 republics. The autonomous republics were unquestionably under jurisdiction of the respective republic and Georgian republic did not contain such reference - needless to say, South Ossetia was not even an autonomous republic to start with! On March 31, 1991 Georgia has conducted referendum (held ALSO in Abkhazia and South Ossetia) and voted for independence by overwhelming majority. Abkhaz territory conducted referendum after expelling more than 60% of its population, depriving them of any vote. Insofar South Ossetia is concerned, that was absolute joke to start with, as these has never been any remote resemblance to the state at all - it was a region ran by smugglers, profiting on hijacked cars and illegal trade of spirit with Russia...