Thousands of people took to the streets of Georgia's major cities on Saturday in protest at the Georgian government's response to recent events along the country's de-facto border (the administrative boundary line) with South Ossetia. On 10 July, the de-facto authorities of South Ossetia moved border posts several hundred metres deeper into Georgian-controlled territory in the vicinity of two villages—Orchosani and Tsitelubani—in Georgia's Shida Kartli region.
A 1.5 kilometre underground section of the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline has now been brought under South Ossetian control, while the de-facto border is now nearly half a kilometre closer to Georgia's East-West highway and the Kartli-2 power line. As in similar incidents, local villagers have now found part of their farmland on the other side of a border which is, at best, sensitive.
This gradual appearance of warning signs and barbed wire is known as 'borderisation', a creeping and irregular demarcation of the de-facto state's boundaries since the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia. The potential repercussions extend much further than the comparatively small territorial losses.
