A leadership shuffle in the Russian-occupied portion of Georgia signals that Russia is still invested in redrawing borders in the Caucasus.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on, Moscow is moving to solidify its hold over another neighbor’s territory—this time not with tanks but by the stroke of a pen. The Kremlin last week installed new leadership in Georgia’s Russian-occupied region of South Ossetia, possibly as a precursor to absorbing the breakaway province. At the same time, Georgia’s increasingly authoritarian ruling party remains more concerned with preserving domestic control than rallying international opposition to Russia.

On June 23, Alan Gagloev, who had served as de facto president of South Ossetia since 2022, resigned his post and announced he was joining Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration as an advisor. In an address announcing the move, Gagloev called it a step toward fulfilling his “cherished dream” of South Ossetia’s incorporation into the Russian Federation. Marat Kambolov, a former Russian government official of Ossetian descent, has been installed as Gagloev’s replacement.

Russia and South Ossetia laid the legal groundwork for this move on May 9, a major holiday celebrating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The two sides signed a “Treaty on Deepening Allied Interaction Between the Russian Federation and the Republic of South Ossetia,” allowing Russian citizens to hold government positions in the occupied region, and vice versa. The Russian State Duma ratified the treaty in mid-May.

In the treaty, Russia and South Ossetia also commit to take further steps toward creating a “single economic space.” These include harmonizing legislation governing business activity and moving toward common rules for external borrowing and foreign investment. It also provides for the gradual integration in the energy, transport, communications, and telecommunications industries.

In other words, Russia is not merely installing loyal officials in South Ossetia. It is folding the region’s economy, infrastructure, and legal framework into Russia’s own.

South Ossetia has been under Russian occupation since the August 2008 Russo-Georgian War, after which Moscow recognized both South Ossetia and another breakaway Georgian province, Abkhazia, as “independent” states. The United States, the European Union, and nearly every other country in the world continue to regard South Ossetia as Georgian territory.

Russia stations its 4th Guards Military Base in South Ossetia’s Tskhinvali, and the breakaway region’s own armed forces have been formally integrated into Russian command structures. Roughly 90 percent of South Ossetia’s 56,000 residents now hold Russian citizenship. Russian funding accounts for around four-fifths of South Ossetia’s budget.

None of that makes the region Russian property.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians were displaced from South Ossetia by the 2008 war and its aftermath. Many still live in non-occupied parts of Georgia. They hold no Russian passports and have no voice whatsoever in a process unfolding on the territory they were forced to leave. Russia is an occupying power engineering a demographic and “legal” fait accompli at gunpoint.

The nominal independence of South Ossetia’s political institutions was always a thin masking for Russian control. That mask is falling away.

Russia has run this playbook before. In eastern Ukraine, Russia fomented separatist violence and eventually intervened militarily to establish “independent republics” in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Moscow spent years embedding these proxy statelets into Russian administrative, legal, and economic structures by distributing passports, harmonizing laws, and treating the presence of “Russian citizens” as a pretext for deeper intervention. In 2022, it formally annexed them.

The Kremlin denies that its recent moves in South Ossetia signal a plan for formal annexation, but that offers little reassurance. Moscow made similar denials in 2021 ahead of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The lesson is that formal annexation is often the last step, not the first.

Abkhazia, the other Georgian region under Russian occupation, is the obvious next target. Russia controls it through the same combination of military presence, distribution of Russian passports, and fostered economic dependency. The process is less advanced there because Abkhaz public opinion is more resistant to full absorption.

The Georgian government has been apathetic to having its territory taken. After Putin and Gagloev signed the May 9 treaty, Tbilisi initially offered no public comment. Only days later did Foreign Minister Maka Bochorishvili acknowledge that “Russia continues to ignore its international obligations and is taking steps aimed at annexing Georgian regions.” Even then, the ruling Georgian Dream party pointed to the treaty as validation of its policy of détente with Moscow.

That’s hardly surprising given that Bidzina Ivanishvili, the oligarch who runs the ruling party, Georgian Dream, from behind the scenes, made his billions in Russia and maintains strong ties there. He has gone so far as to call on Georgia to apologize for the 2008 war.

Tbilisi has boosted economic ties with Russia in recent years, becoming a hub for Russian sanctions evasion amid the war in Ukraine, while also deepening relations with China and Iran. Meanwhile, Georgia has destroyed its once-strong partnership with the West by cracking down on Georgia’s domestic opposition, civil society, and independent media.

For Washington, the stakes extend beyond South Ossetia or even Georgia. If Moscow can quietly absorb the region after enough time has passed and enough facts have been manufactured on the ground, it reinforces a broader lesson Russia has been testing across the post-Soviet space: that borders can still be redrawn by force, occupation, and coerced dependency.

Other revanchist powers are watching how the West treats this territorial absorption.

The United States should not wait for a formal annexation decree before responding. It should publicly condemn the absorption process now, reaffirm that South Ossetia is Georgian territory, coordinate with European partners, and signal that officials facilitating the region’s incorporation into Russia could face consequences.

About the Author: Keti Korkiya

Keti Korkiya is a researcher specializing in international law and national security at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Before joining FDD, Keti was a postgraduate fellow at the Center on National Security at Georgetown University Law Center, where she contributed to the Cumulative Civilian Harm Project and supported the launch of the Virginia-Georgetown Manual on the Use of Force and the Woomera Manual on Military Space Activities and Operations. She holds an LLM in national security law from Georgetown University, an LLM in international law from the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, and an LLB from the University of Essex.

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