Voters in Georgia’s breakaway Republic of South Ossetia will head to the polls on November 12 to choose a new president and to participate in a referendum on the unrecognized republic’s independent status, RFE/RL reports.

Aside from choosing a president on November 12, voters in Georgia’s breakaway republic will be asked to vote in a referendum on whether they want South Ossetia “to maintain its status as an independent state and be recognized [as such] by the international community.”

Nothing but a few concrete blocks and a dozen beefy men armed with Kalashnikovs and wearing camouflage separate Georgia from its breakaway province South Ossetia at a main checkpoint. But separatist officials hope Sunday’s referendum will once and for all place its borders on the map and lead to the international recognition of this tiny, mountainous region, which broke away from the central government in a bloody war 14 years ago, AP reports.

The vote — ignored by the West — will also show how far neighboring Russia, which is itself battling separatists, is willing to go in its support of the rebel region that observers say has led to the ongoing crisis in relations with Georgia.

Observers warn that further deepening divisions in the volatile multiethnic and multireligious Caucasus Mountains — a strategic region for Western powers because of its huge energy resources- is a dangerous game, pointing to the bloodshed in the Balkans.

“Today we are showing to the international community … that we are ready to achieve the recognition of independence of our state through peaceful, civilized means,” regional leader Eduard Kokoity said in the province’s capital, Tskhinvali.

South Ossetia, once an autonomous district within Soviet Georgia, broke away from the central government following a 1991-92 war, in which more than 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands displaced. The province has been de-facto independent ever since, despite not being recognized internationally.

The province, slightly smaller than Rhode Island, is home to 70,000 people and is an ethnic chessboard of Georgian and Ossetian villages controlled by separatist forces and Georgian police respectively.

Georgia’s pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili has made it a priority to rein in South Ossetia and another rebel province, the Black sea region of Abkhazia. Just as firmly, the two regions have vowed to never let that happen.

Instead, South Ossetia and Abkhazia have expressed the desire to be incorporated into neighboring Russia, which has granted nearly all residents Russian passports and cultivated strong political and economic ties with the impoverished region that lives on subsistence farming and smuggling.

Russia has also drawn Georgia’s ire by beginning to build a pipeline that will carry natural gas to South Ossetia, without consulting Tbilisi.

The Russian ruble is the local currency and Russian flags fly alongside the regional banners. Residents here even live according to Moscow time, while the rest of Georgia is one hour ahead.

Russian peacekeepers patrol the region, together with Georgian soldiers, who accuse them of siding with separatists. Moscow denies the claims.

The Kremlin in turn, claims Georgia is building up military to take the two provinces by forces — accusations Tbilisi rejects.

However, Saakashvili replaced his hawkish defense minister Friday in a step that observers said aimed to show that Tbilisi was softening its policy toward the Russian-backed separatists. Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili had vowed to celebrate New Year in South Ossetia’s capital.

Most of the local population remains deeply suspicious of the central government.

“We want to be with Russia, in peace,” said Alyona Tedeyeva, a 29-year-old dancer at a local folk music and dance company who was heading to a rally in support of the referendum. “In Georgia, (our) people will be discriminated against, they won’t get good jobs.”

Saakashvili has put forward a new peace plan that would decrease Russia’s role in the region. The separatists have refused to consider it, asking that Tbilisi first sign a nonaggression pact.

The United States and the European Union have said they will ignore the referendum, urging Tbilisi and the separatists to resume negotiations.

While the Kremlin has stopped short of recognizing the plebiscite, it has urged Tbilisi to take the results of the vote into consideration and suggested that Russia felt responsibility for the region, since most of its residents were Russian citizens.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also indicated that Moscow will closely watch any international precedents of secession, including in the disputed Serbian province of Kosovo, where many seek independence.

Relations between Moscow and Tbilisi are at their lowest points in years. Moscow hit Tbilisi with economic sanctions and cracked down on Georgians living in Russia following the brief detention of four purported Russian spies. Many observers say the rebel provinces were in fact at the heart of the dispute.

Spoiling the separatist leaders’ plans is a renegade referendum and presidential vote — in addition to the one being held in Tskhinvali — conducted by the region’s Georgian community numbering some 14,000 voters, according to Georgian officials.

Kokoity dismissed the renegade election as a “farce.” Tbilisi, which formally doesn’t recognize either vote, hopes the twin vote will demonstrate a rift among the separatists.

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