Russian-controlled Tskhinvali says Kazbegi district “occupied” by Tbilisi

Georgia’s Russian-controlled Tskhinvali region has responded to the recent resolution by the UN General Assembly, calling for the return of Georgian IDPs and refugees to the occupied Tskhinvali and Abkhazia regions, stating that “South Ossetia [Tskhinvali] is an independent state,”and that it is the central Georgian government which “occupies its territories.”

“Georgia has literally occupied the native Ossetian lands. The so-called Kazbegi district, where human rights are largely violated. Ossetians expelled from these lands are forbidden to visit their homes, ancestral graves, which the Georgian government and its Western allies do not talk about at the UN,” said the de facto authorities.

The de facto Foreign Ministry condemned and disapproved of the resolution, “as it reflects a one-sided, politically grounded approach towards IDPs and refugees” and that “ethnic Georgians left South Ossetia deliberately and voluntarily even before the war in the 1990s and before the August 2008 war.”

“At the same time, since the 1990s, about 100,000 ethnic Ossetians have fled Georgia to South Ossetia in order to escape ethnic cleansing and aggression from Georgia, becoming refugees, whose fate causes no worries in the West,” said the de facto ministry.

Russia recognized the two Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali as independent states after the Russia-Georgia 2008 war.

Since then only Venezuela, Nikaragua, Nauru and Syria have joined the move, while the rest of the international community is unanimous that the regions are occupied by Russia.