Russia’s new South Ossetian playbook and its potential applicability elsewhere.
South Ossetia has long been the most deeply penetrated of Russia’s post-Soviet, de facto states. The small breakaway territory, internationally recognized as part of Georgia, could not sustain its security, budget, or external connections without Moscow. Most of its residents hold Russian citizenship, Russian troops guarantee its survival, and much of its political class openly supports eventual unification with North Ossetia–Alania, and thus the Russian Federation.
Yet even within this relationship, one distinction had largely endured. Moscow could shape South Ossetian politics and place Russian officials inside its government, but the presidency remained the preserve of locally rooted politicians.
South Ossetia’s dependence on Russia predates the current moment by decades. Russian peacekeepers have maintained a presence in the territory since the 1992 ceasefire that ended Georgia’s conflict with local separatists. That relationship deepened sharply after the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war, when Russia recognized South Ossetia’s independence, established a permanent military base in the regional capital Tskhinvali, and began directly financing most of the territory’s budget.
Our Man From Moscow
The political elevation of Marat Kambolov suggests that this distinction is now being eroded. On 27 May, Kambolov was appointed state adviser to President Alan Gagloyev, charged with implementing a new treaty between Russia and South Ossetia. A short time later, on 16 June, South Ossetia’s parliament unanimously approved him as prime minister. And after just a week, Gagloyev resigned to become an adviser to Vladimir Putin, automatically transferring presidential powers to Kambolov, as per the South Ossetian constitution.
The territory’s system is nominally semi-presidential: the president is directly elected by popular vote for a five-year term, serves as both head of state and head of the executive, and appoints the prime minister subject to parliamentary confirmation, making the presidency the dominant office. Elections have been held with some regularity, and past contests in 2017 and 2022 saw incumbents genuinely lose. But international observers, including Freedom House, have consistently found the field of viable candidates artificially narrowed to figures acceptable to Moscow, meaning competition has occurred only within Kremlin-tolerated limits rather than reflecting a fully open contest. A snap election is now scheduled for 18 September, with Kambolov as the clear favorite.
Born in North Ossetia in 1965, Kambolov has no established political constituency in South Ossetia. His career was instead built within the Russian federal state. He worked in the antimonopoly administration and the Ministry for Nationalities during the 1990s, later became deputy head of the Federal Agency for Science and Innovation, and served as Russia’s deputy minister of education and science between 2010 and 2014. He then moved to the Kurchatov Institute, one of Russia’s most important and politically connected state research institutions, becoming its director in 2021 and subsequently its first vice-president. Kambolov’s association with the institute does not by itself explain his selection for South Ossetia. It does, however, situate him within one of the institutional networks closest to the contemporary Russian state. Kambolov is therefore not a South Ossetian politician who happens to enjoy Moscow’s support. Rather, he is an experienced Russian state manager, trained in public administration and law, whose authority derives primarily from the institutions and elite networks through which the Kremlin governs.
Kambolov’s apparent value lies, then, less in local popularity than in his ability to oversee budgets, development programs, and bureaucratic systems. At least, that is how he has presented himself since arriving. Kambolov has demanded analytical reports on the budget, investment projects, and the performance of government departments. He has made unannounced inspections, challenged official claims about the price and availability of medicines, and criticized the expansion of local bureaucracy while the territory’s already small population declines. The image is not that of a politician attempting to build a social coalition, but of an auditor sent to establish what the Russian-financed state is actually doing.
The legal groundwork for his imminent arrival was established less than a month before he entered South Ossetian politics. On 9 May, Putin and Gagloyev signed a treaty on “deepening allied interaction,” committing the two sides to closer coordination of foreign, defense, security, and border policies, as well as what the document calls further harmonization of legislation and deeper integration of their economic and infrastructural systems.
In practice, the treaty further deepens South Ossetia’s dependence on and integration with Russia. Most consequentially for Kambolov’s ascension, it allows citizens of either side to hold state and municipal office in the other. It also provides a mechanism through which residence in Russia can count toward South Ossetian eligibility requirements.
This is pertinent because South Ossetia’s constitution ordinarily requires presidential candidates to have lived permanently in the territory for the preceding 10 years. Kambolov plainly could not have satisfied that condition conventionally. The new agreement has thus created a legal bridge through which a long career inside the Russian state could substitute for a decade of residence in South Ossetia.
Of course, it cannot be proven from the treaty alone that this provision was written specifically for Kambolov. Yet the timing is revealing. The agreement entered into force on 26 May, with Kambolov appointed the following day as Gagloyev’s state counselor, tasked with overseeing its implementation. He was then moved into the premiership in less than a month to place him next in the constitutional line of succession, before Gagloyev resigned and entered Putin’s own administration. The transfer was therefore conducted through South Ossetia’s existing institutions rather than in open defiance of them.
Since Kambolov automatically became acting president, he has formally submitted his candidacy to the Central Election Commission for a more long-term role. Three of the four parties represented in the South Ossetian parliament initially endorsed him, including the nominally opposition United Ossetia party, the former ruling Nykhas party, and the Communists. Crucially, Putin publicly supported Kambolov’s candidacy during a meeting in Moscow on 13 July. Seven contenders ultimately registered, including Khokh Chochiev, a relatively inexperienced opposition figure formerly employed as a presidential bodyguard for Leonid Tibilov. There remains little indication, however, that the election will seriously threaten Kambolov’s position.
Takeover by Stealth
A cursory reading of these developments elicits a seemingly obvious conclusion: South Ossetia is being prepared for annexation. Moscow’s role in the territory has deepened steadily since the 1990s, and since the 2008 war it has underwritten the bulk of its budget, a dependency that a 2015 “integration” treaty on defense, customs, and border management further entrenched. Around 90 percent of South Ossetia’s roughly 56,000 residents hold Russian citizenship, and its armed forces were partially folded into the Russian military in 2017. The territory’s leaders have long supported incorporation into Russia, and Gagloyev explicitly linked his new Kremlin role to the “cherished dream” of reunification with North Ossetia and Russia.
Yet it would be remiss to read Kambolov’s rise reductively as formal annexation by another name. Moscow already controls South Ossetia’s security environment and, as noted, exercises extensive influence over its political institutions. Formal incorporation would impose additional diplomatic and legal costs, particularly in Russia’s relationship with Georgia, while providing few immediate capabilities that Moscow does not already possess. The Kremlin has, for its part, officially and repeatedly denied any plan to formally annex the territory.
Such assurances have not stopped a chorus of Western and Georgian analysts from describing the current trajectory as a prelude to eventual annexation without a formal declaration, with some explicitly drawing a parallel to Moscow’s years-long “passportization” and legal-harmonization campaign in separatist-held parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions before their 2022 annexation. Whether that comparison holds, South Ossetia’s small size and near-total dependence make it a far easier candidate for such a process than eastern Ukraine ever was.
The potentially more consequential development would be a shift from patronage toward administration. Russia has traditionally supported its aligned de facto states, such as Abkhazia and Transnistria, through dependent local elites. Moscow supplies security, money, citizenship, and political protection while local leaders remain responsible for domestic governance and distribute resources through their own networks. Such arrangements provide influence without requiring Russia to administer these territories directly. They also create recurring problems. Local elites may be loyal to Moscow but ineffective, resistant to particular demands, or more interested in protecting their own patronage systems than implementing the priorities of their patron.
South Ossetia offers unusually favorable conditions for Moscow to reduce its reliance on these intermediaries. Despite Russia’s massive financial support, successive governments have struggled to produce sustainable development or consistently effective public services. Kambolov’s first actions suggest that he has arrived partly to inspect and discipline the system Russia already finances.
This is not entirely without precedent. Russia has placed its candidates before into the territory’s premiership and other ministerial posts. Yet until now, South Ossetian presidents had been drawn from the territory’s own political elite, those whose careers, networks, and claims to authority had been developed within South Ossetia, however dependent they remained on Moscow. This is where Kambolov differs. Directly transferred from the Russian state system without an established political career or constituency in South Ossetia, Kambolov is now positioned to become the first such figure to secure a full presidential mandate.
Locally entrenched leaders, even if beholden to Russia, retain their own local political interests. They must manage local networks, public expectations, and competition over the distribution of Russian resources. Kambolov possesses neither that constituency nor the same incentive to protect it. Rather, his authority and probable political future are tied more directly to Moscow as Russia appears to be testing whether it can place one of its own administrators at the head of the client state.
Long-Distance Governance
Whether this becomes a wider Russian playbook remains uncertain. In Abkhazia, Moscow is also positioning trusted political managers closer to local decision-making. Sergei Kiriyenko, the senior Kremlin official responsible for managing much of Russia’s domestic political system, now plays a leading role in relations with both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, a move described by over 50 Georgian opposition and civil society figures as part of a “phased annexation process.”
It is worth noting that former Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, a figure associated with Kiriyenko’s political network rather than the Russian diplomatic establishment, has meanwhile been appointed ambassador to Abkhazia. Yet Abkhazia is less suitable for a direct reproduction of the South Ossetian process. Its politics are more competitive, and its society retains stronger red lines surrounding land, property, and sovereignty. In November 2024, protests against an investment agreement granting privileges to Russian businesses forced President Aslan Bzhania to resign as protesters stormed the Abkhaz parliament building in Sukhumi. Moscow may seek tighter supervision and more dependable cadres in Abkhazia, but an imported Russian official moving directly into the presidency would likely face considerably greater resistance.
On the other hand, Transnistria’s scheduled presidential election on 13 December provides another possible test, albeit under very different conditions. No clear favorite to succeed the incumbent Vadim Krasnoselsky has yet emerged. The region’s political system remains dominated by the Sheriff conglomerate (and its parliamentary vehicle, Obnovlenie, which holds all seats in Transnistria’s Supreme Soviet and is closely aligned with Krasnoselsky). Elements of the security apparatus are generally regarded as more closely aligned with Moscow, which maintains a small “peacekeeping” force in the territory. Russia’s leverage has also been tested since the beginning of 2025, when the expiry of the Russian gas transit agreement through Ukraine coincided with Gazprom’s decision to halt supplies to Moldova over disputed unpaid debts, ending Transnistria’s access to effectively unlimited subsidized Russian gas. The resulting energy crisis destabilized the region’s economy. As we have argued, the thinning of Russian patronage and growing strain within the region’s ruling elite have placed particular pressure on Sheriff and the status quo.
Moscow could use energy, financial, and security leverage to encourage a successor less autonomous from Russian structures. Physically deploying a Russian administrator remains improbable, however. While Moscow recognizes the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it does not recognize Transnistria as an independent state, lacks direct territorial access, and must account for the region’s dependence on Moldovan-controlled channels and European markets. In Transnistria, an adapted playbook would more likely involve shaping the choice of a locally eligible candidate than installing a Kambolov from outside.
South Ossetia should therefore be treated as a model of possibility rather than a universal template. Its unusually high dependence and comparatively weak domestic constraints allow Moscow to move further than it can elsewhere. The wider principle may nevertheless travel: narrow the autonomy of local intermediaries, embed Russian managers more deeply, and use constitutional and electoral mechanisms to formalize a transfer of authority already agreed outside the territory.
Kambolov does not mark the beginning of Russian control over South Ossetia. That control is long-established. His elevation is consequential because it weakens the remaining distinction between Russian influence over South Ossetian institutions and direct Russian participation in staffing and administering them. South Ossetia has not formally joined Russia. Increasingly, however, Moscow appears able to govern it without doing so.
Will Kingston-Cox is founder and managing director of Europinion.uk, and a postgraduate researcher in Russian and East European studies at the University of Oxford.
Laurentiu Plesca is a program officer at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
