When Russian President Vladimir Putin and South Ossetian President Alan Gagloev signed their "Treaty on Deepening Allied Interaction" at the Kremlin on May 9, the Russian State Duma ratified it within days. The speed was deliberate. So was the date: Victory Day, chosen to frame the absorption of a small Caucasian territory as part of Russia's historic mission.

The document's provisions, taken together, amount to what analysts and Georgian opposition figures are calling de facto annexation. Russian officials can be directly appointed to posts within South Ossetia's de facto administration. Property rights are mutualised. Economic legislation will be harmonised. Energy systems, transport and telecommunications will be gradually integrated. Work records will be mutually recognised for pensions and social security. And those serving in South Ossetia's military and security structures are not excluded from simplified Russian citizenship.

"The agreement amounts to the practical annexation of the region," said Tamta Mikeladze, director of Georgia's Social Justice Center, Jam News reported. "Beyond this, almost nothing remains except the region's direct and legal incorporation into Russia."

Gagloev was explicit about the direction of travel, describing the treaty as "a step towards the reunification of the Ossetian people" and a legal mechanism for South Ossetia's possible future entry into the Russian Federation, Special Eurasia reported. The idea of unifying the "divided Ossetian people" — split between South Ossetia and Russia's Republic of North Ossetia-Alania — has been a recurring political slogan since the early 1990s. Previous South Ossetian leaders repeatedly floated referendums on joining Russia. In May 2022, then-president Anatoly Bibilov even set July 17 as a referendum date, only for his successor Gagloev to suspend it after consulting Moscow. The 2026 treaty is the next move in that long game, advancing the pieces without yet declaring checkmate.

Georgian Dream's telling silence

For Tbilisi, the treaty threatens what it regards as occupied Georgian territory. Foreign Minister Maka Bochorishvili condemned it at the Council of Europe in Chișinău as evidence that Russia "is taking further steps toward the annexation of Georgia's regions," OC Media reported.

But Georgian opposition figures pointed not just at Moscow but at their own government. "Since the signing of the agreement on May 9, the ruling regime has not made a single statement," said Salome Samadashvili of the Lelo-Strong Georgia party, Interpressnews reported. "The government which detains and physically abuses its own citizens for peacefully demonstrating against the Russian occupation is silent on the open annexation of Georgian territory. This silence is consent."

Samadashvili demanded evidence that Tbilisi had lobbied Western partners for a response and called for publication of any instructions issued by Georgia's foreign ministry to its diplomatic missions on May 9. "I wonder if a single meeting was held between Georgian diplomatic representatives and our partner countries," she said.

The opposition's frustration was compounded by the absence of any significant Western reaction — a silence Samadashvili attributed to the international isolation that Georgian Dream's pro-Russian drift has produced. "This is the logical consequence of the policy pursued by the Ivanishvili regime," she said.

Mikeladze was equally scathing about Georgian Dream's broader record. "They have given everything away to Russia, deprived us of the chance to join the EU and attacked the countries that defend our territorial integrity. Yet they have achieved nothing. Georgians in Gali remain without rights. No detainees have been released from the occupied territories in a timely manner. Now we are witnessing a catastrophic push towards annexation in Tskhinvali." 

Passportisation and creeping integration

To understand what is happening in South Ossetia, it helps to place it within Moscow's broader post-Soviet playbook. Russia has followed a consistent pattern across multiple separatist spaces: support for unrecognised entities, followed by mass distribution of Russian passports — a process known as passportisation — which builds the argument of a "Russian" population requiring "protection". This logic was used in Georgia ahead of the 2008 war, in eastern Ukraine before 2014, and across Russia's occupied Ukrainian territories since.

In March 2026, Putin signed a decree indefinitely extending simplified citizenship in Russia's occupied Ukrainian territories. In May 2025, he had done the same for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The May 2026 treaty is the next escalation in the same sequence.

The same template is now being applied to Transnistria, the Russian-backed breakaway territory that has controlled a strip of eastern Moldova since the early 1990s. Putin recently signed a decree simplifying citizenship for Transnistrian residents, waiving residency requirements, language tests and civic examinations, MSN reported. As with South Ossetia, those serving in Transnistrian military and security structures are eligible. Nataliia Yurlova, a lawyer for NGO Donbas SOS, described the goal plainly: "to passportise as many people as possible, pressuring them."

Moldova's government has been pushing back. It has imposed customs and tax obligations on the region, declared Russian military commanders persona non grata and passed anti-separatism legislation. Tiraspol has called these measures an "economic blockade". Moscow has spoken of "economic suffocation". The passportisation decree, in the Kremlin's logic, creates a population of Russian citizens on Moldovan territory whose "protection" Moscow can invoke at a moment of its choosing — though Transnistria remains at an earlier stage of this process than South Ossetia, without the formal treaty architecture or explicit annexation rhetoric from its leadership.

Three scenarios

Regional analysts outline three possible trajectories for South Ossetia.

The most likely near-term outcome is continued deep integration without formal annexation. Georgia remains an essential economic conduit for Russia, serving as a hub for parallel imports circumventing Western sanctions. Full legal annexation would risk disrupting those flows, inviting new sanctions and potentially destabilising Tbilisi in ways that could push Georgia back toward the West. Moscow appears reluctant to open a second front while still engaged in Ukraine, according to Special Eurasia.

A second, less likely scenario would see Russia move toward legal incorporation of South Ossetia and possible unification with North Ossetia-Alania if relations with Georgia deteriorate sharply or if domestic pressures demand a new territorial success. This would invite additional Western sanctions and could reignite the street protests in Georgia that Georgian Dream has so far managed to suppress.

The third scenario is a prolonged status quo: reunification rhetoric continues, integration deepens through the treaty's provisions, but formal annexation is indefinitely postponed while Russia remains focused on Ukraine.

What distinguishes the current moment is the combination of pace and breadth. The South Ossetia treaty, the Transnistria passportisation decree and the ongoing absorption of occupied Ukrainian territories are not isolated events. They are components of a coordinated strategy to lock in Russian influence across multiple post-Soviet spaces simultaneously — using the Ukraine war and the West's divided attention to advance positions that would have drawn sharper responses in calmer times.