A Free South Ossetia?

For the skeptics who raise doubts about their future as an independent state, South Ossetians have one word: Andorra.

The comparison sounded a little strange, looking around this city, the capital of the enclave of South Ossetia, which was burned and battered by Georgian attacks earlier this month. Bullets had torn big chunks out of the pine trees, and the turret of a tank lay upside down in a doorway. Someone had spray-painted the words “Shame, Georgian bootlicker!” on a wall on the main boulevard.

Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations has filled people here with hope that other countries will follow. To outsiders, that hope may seem far-fetched; Western leaders have made it clear that they consider the regions part of Georgia.

But all is not as it appears.

Russia intends to eventually absorb Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia, a South Ossetian official said Friday, three days after Moscow recognized the region as independent and drew criticism from the West.

Georgia, meanwhile, said it would recall all diplomatic staff from its embassy in Moscow on Saturday because of the Russian military presence in Georgia. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nestrenko criticized the move, saying it “will not benefit our bilateral relations,” Russian news agencies reported.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the region’s leader, Eduard Kokoity, discussed the future of South Ossetia earlier this week in Moscow, South Ossetian parliamentary speaker Znaur Gassiyev said.

Russia will absorb South Ossetia “in several years” or earlier, a position was “firmly stated by both leaders,” Gassiyev said.

Do not say that you were not warned–this will become a major problem for the next president.