In August 2019 a simmering territorial dispute pushed by South Ossetia revived when Georgian authorities constructed a new police post on Tbilisi administered territory near the South Ossetian controlled village of Tsnelisi (referred to as Uista by the South Ossetian side) . The course of the so-called “border” in the thickly forested area between between Tsnelisi and Georgian controlled Chorchana is disputed by South Ossetia. A few days prior to the renewed conflict, borderization at Gugutiantkari stirred emotions on the Georgian side.
In the past, Tskhinvali has laid a (historic) claim on the area between Tsnelisi and Chorchana, at the southwestern corner of South Ossetia. Since 2019 it has come to an explicit yet non-physical confrontation, with Georgia de facto losing control of roughly 5 square kilometers of territory, for the moment, which roots in a tactical blunder by the Georgian side . A series of incidents, heated rhetoric and Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) meetings were some of the direct and visible elements of the dispute which is still ongoing unresolved into 2025. This page is a chronological overview of developments since August 2019 (last updates at the bottom of the page).
Continue reading Territorial dispute Chorchana-Tsnelisi over old and “fake” maps