To analyse

Referendum in South Ossetia to join Russia: a new front for Putin?

The leader of South Ossetia, Anatoly Bibilov, in 2017 (illustration image).

POOL/AFP/File

Text by: Régis Genté Follow

3 mins

On March 30, the head of the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia, Anatoly Bibilov, announced that he wanted to organize a referendum on joining Russia.

This announcement follows that of other secessionist entities supported by Moscow, those of the so-called People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, in the Donbass, at war. 

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From our correspondent in the region

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This project of unification of South Ossetia with Russia looks like a movement coordinated from Moscow even if the interest of the Russians is not obvious.

As regards South Ossetia, which

seceded from Georgia immediately after the fall of the USSR, recognized by Moscow at the end of the Russo-Georgian war of 2008, this announcement risks irritating Tbilisi.

And this, while the Georgian government has chosen not to join Western sanctions, out of caution.

A nuisance capacity in the Caucasus

Two Russian motivations can explain this announcement.

Firstly, it may be a question of extending the perimeter of the crisis in Ukraine, Moscow deciding to show its capacity for harm in the Caucasus.

It costs almost nothing, Moscow knowing that Georgia will not react on the ground.

Second, it could be for Vladimir Putin to make his people believe that he is winning victories, by expanding the size of the Russian Federation, in Ukraine, in the Caucasus.

This would confirm that the Russian army is in bad shape in Ukraine and that the Kremlin is looking for symbolic victories.

► Also to listen: The war in Ukraine and the destabilization of the former Soviet republics

There may be a more ideological dimension as well.

Of course, Vladimir Putin said that to believe in the restoration of the USSR was to have no head.

But on the ground, it's something like that that drives him.

Even if he does not speak of the USSR, but of the unity of what he calls the “Russian world”.

Vague notion which is supposed to bring together sometimes ethnic Russians, sometimes Russian speakers, sometimes those who were part of the USSR.

The action and ideology promoted by Russia for 22 years, since Mr. Putin has been president, shows that Moscow is indeed trying to impose its yoke on Belarus, that it is wresting provinces from the former Soviet republics, Transnistria to Moldova, South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Georgia, the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk to Ukraine.

Bad memories for Georgia

What does this announcement from the leader of South Ossetia mean for Georgia?

If this referendum were to be held, even though this region has been out of Tbilisi's control for 30 years anyway, it would mean that Russian territory would lie south of the Greater Caucasus mountain range.

And that the Russian borders would only be 75 km from Tbilisi.

This would also confirm that Russia is in a logic of aggression, political at this stage, towards Georgia.

For several weeks now, we have been hearing half-word threats, whether against the presence of an American biological laboratory in Tbilisi or against the autonomous province of Adjara, on the shores of the Black Sea.

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