Agency Caucasus – Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced on Thursday his near-future plans to share “an open border” with South Ossetia, a region in the north Caucasus that Russia has recognized as independent early this month after it came under heavy attacks from Georgia.
"Today it will be sufficient if we assist in South Ossetia’s economic reconstruction and actually remove the border between and that republic," the Interfax news agency quoted Putin as saying.
Putin hoped that it would now be easier for people in the region to travel freely, without being handicapped by the formalities of sharing a state border, Interfax quoted him as saying.
Putin acted swiftly last month in responding to Georgian aggression against South Ossetia, leaving Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili obliged to push his forces back from Tskhinval only hours after they were ordered to invade the capital city of
Russia did not only choose to respond militarily to Georgia’s incursion into South Ossetia; it also challenged the West when it announced its recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent countries—a move that came months after the West recognized Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence.
HAS[REU]
