On 17 March 1991, South-Ossetians took part in the referendum on the future of the USSR where 98 percent of the population voted in favor of preserving the Union. It should be noted that the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic had banned the referendum in the territory of Georgia violating once again the existing legislation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people of South Ossetia almost unanimously voted, in a referendum that took place on 19 January 1992, for the independence of South Ossetia. On 29 May 1992, the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of South Ossetia adopted the Act on State Independence.
On 23 July 1992, the Supreme Soviet of Abkhazia pronounced Abkhazia a sovereign state, a subject of international law. At the same time, the Parliament of Abkhazia invited the leadership of Georgia to start negotiations on establishing equal relations on the basis of a federal agreement.
In response to a refusal by South Ossetia and Abkhazia to submit to Tbilisi's dictate, the Georgian leadership decided to use force to bend them to will.
The hostilities started by the Georgian authorities against South Ossetia killed more than three thousand people in 1990-91, with more than 40 thousand Ossetians fleeing to North Ossetia. Over one hundred South-Ossetian villages were burned down.
As a result of the war against Abkhazia, started by the Georgian leadership in 1992, more than seven thousand people were killed and 200 to 250 thousand people (predominantly Georgians) (out of 550 thousand people who lived in Abkhazia before the war) became refugees.
4) After the aggressive wars against Abkhazia and South Ossetia were stopped, at the cost of lives of many Abkhazians and South-Ossetians, Russia has actively facilitated a process to resolve the conflict and establish negotiating mechanisms.
At their meeting on 24 June 1992 in Sochi, the President of Russia Boris N. Yeltsin and President of Georgia Eduard A. Shevardnadze signed an Agreement on the Principles for Resolving the Georgia-South Ossetia Conflict under which a peace-keeping operation in South Ossetia was started on 14 July 1992: the Mixed Peacekeeping Forces (MPF) in the Zone of Conflict between Georgia and Ossetia comprised of the Russian, Georgian and Ossetian battalions entered the conflict zone. The Sochi Agreement also set up a Mixed Control Commission for Georgian-Ossetian Conflict Resolution (MCC). The OSCE began its participation in the MCC as an observer.
Attempting to resolve the problem by military means, in June-August 2004 the Georgian side used force against South Ossetia in gross violation of the aforementioned Agreement.
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