Moscow appears to have had it with South Ossetian politicians who undermine the Kremlin’s influence in the breakaway Caucasus territory and besmirch its image. Days after South Ossetian politician Jambolat Tedeyev renewed his claims to the region's de-facto presidency, Russian Federal Security Service agents showed up at his door.
Tedeyev, the coach of Russia’s national free wrestling team, was questioned and his apartment searched on January 25. Some Russian news reports say that Russian authorities may soon charge Tedeyev with an attempt to stage a coup in South Ossetia.
Russia recognizes South Ossetia as an independent country from Georgia, and the authority by which Tedeyev would be charged is not clear.
But such legal niceties matter little when a power struggle is at hand. Last September, when South Ossetia’s de-facto authorities barred Tedeyev from running in the region's de-facto presidential election, his supporters took to the streets in the capital, Tskhinvali. South Ossetia's then de-facto leader, Eduard Kokoity, accused Tedeyev of trying to stage a color revolution.
In response, Tedeyev, who belongs to an influential local clan, threw his support behind another opposition presidential hopeful, Alla Jioyeva. Jioyeva gained international name recognition late last year when her supporters took to the streets, and stayed there, over canceled de-facto runoff results which showed her the winner over the Russian-endorsed candidate, Anatoliy Bibilov.
And so we come to the present. With a third attempt to elect a new (de-facto) leader now scheduled for March, Tedeyev has declared that he wants to run again. But Moscow appears to be wearying of the surprisingly boisterous pace of South Ossetian politics.
A piece in the Abkhaz newspaper Nuzhnaya suggested that many Russian officials will do all they can to prevent South Ossetia’s opposition from coming to power as the opposition leaders may start looking for Russian aid money that has largely disappeared. Such an investigation could expose a chain of corruption leading from Kokoity’s ex-de-facto government all the way to Moscow, the paper's report claimed.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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