No Jeff
South Ossetia is part of Georgia only because the Georgian communist Stalin said it was. There is no shared language or culture. IN the past Ossetian Christians have always looked to Russia for protection from muslim hordes.
North Ossetia is a part of Russia.
Muslims living in South Ossetia want to stay with georgia...for the time being but are keeping quiet for the time being.
This information should be enough to keep you thinking for a while.
BUT, I think there are a lot of Georgian villages on the border.
“South Ossetia is part of Georgia only because the Georgian communist Stalin said it was. There is no shared language or culture. IN the past Ossetian Christians have always looked to Russia for protection from muslim hordes.”
How muslim is the rest of Georgia?
Despite that, no one in the internaltional community disputes Texas being independent from that former rule, even though along the border the spanish speaking population is a much larger percentage of the population and in some pockets, there are probably some thousands who would want Texas, or that part of it, to not be a part of the US.
Same thing here in this part of Georgia.
Fact is, that area is a part of Georgia. There is a relative small number of people living there who want to be a part of Russia, but they are not a part of Russia and have not been officially recognized by Russia or any other part of the international community as a part of Russia.
Russia is using this as a pretext when they think the west is othwerwise engaged and distracted. Putin and his cronies do not give a whit about those people in the larger view of things.
Russia has invaded another copuntry, plain and simple, and all of the ethnicitiy arguements will not change that fact. It is now simply a question of whether that invasion and occupation will stand against the Georgian people, or the international community...and that is yet to be seen.