TSKHINVALI: South Ossetia will ask the Kremlin to recognise its independence from Georgia, the leader of the breakaway region told a rally including widows and mourning mothers in his war-ravaged capital on Thursday.
Eduard Kokoity, who styles himself president of a country not recognised by any other nation, told a rally of several thousand that Georgia had undermined its own statehood by trying to seize his region by force on Aug 7-8.
Widows and mothers in black, with photographs of their loved ones pinned to their chests, shed tears in the shadows of bombed-out houses on the central square of Tskhinvali as Kokoity lambasted Georgia and its Western backers.
The small, pro-Russian province in the Caucasus mountains, which broke away from Georgian rule in 1992 after a war, saw renewed fighting this month after Georgia tried to impose
control in a failed invasion repelled by Russian forces.
"I have already prepared an address to the President of the Russian Federation, to the Federation Council and State Duma, and to the heads of state of the international community, with a request to recognise our independence," Kokoity said.
"Georgia itself has driven a nail into the coffin of its statehood," said Kokoity, a former Soviet wrestling champion, who wiped away tears as he spoke under a beating sun.
"We proudly say today that we deserve to live in a free and independent republic of South Ossetia," he said. "The recognition of our independence is not a whim of the Ossetians; this is a security guarantee for our tiny people."
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