Putin takes control of Georgia’s South Ossetia
Russia was again accused of violating a neighbour’s sovereignty last night after President Putin signed a treaty incorporating the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia, a year after annexing Crimea from Ukraine.
Georgia, the European Union, the United States and Nato denounced the move, which merges the tiny statelet’s military with Russia’s and hands control of its economy to Moscow. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, said that the treaty “violates Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial *integrity and blatantly contradicts the principles of international law”.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another disputed region, broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s after the Soviet Union fell apart. Russia gained effective control over both regions in a brief war in 2008. Abkhazia signed its own integration treaty with Moscow last year but yesterday’s document goes further. Thomas De Waal, an expert on the Caucasus region, wrote recently that “South Ossetia is being swallowed up”.
The move came shortly before Mr Putin addressed a crowd estimated at more than 100,000 below the Kremlin walls at a concert to celebrate the “return” of Crimea and amid an intensifying row between Moscow, Russian-backed separatists and Kiev that threatens the fragile ceasefire in east Ukraine.
Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, leaders of the self-declared People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, said in a joint statement that Kiev had “trampled” on the peace process and sought to destroy their territory “by violence and economic siege”. They said they would defeat Ukrainian forces again if Kiev wanted to fight, and have broken off co-operation until a new law approved by the Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday is repealed.
That legislation grants special status and devolves substantial power to rebel-held parts of the east, but also includes provisions that separatist leaders and Russia say were introduced without consultation after the Minsk agreements were signed last month, including a demand for local elections to be held first under Ukrainian law. Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine, said the new law would “restore Ukraine’s sovereignty on these territories”. Ukrainian MPs also passed a bill declaring the rebel-held areas “temporarily occupied territories”.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that the new laws “grossly violate” the Minsk agreement and told his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that the bill “could undermine the peace process and lead to a new wave of serious destabilisation”......