South Ossetia (prounounced o-SET-iə or  oh-SEE-shə; Ossetic: Хуссар Ирыстон, Khussar Iryston; Russian: Южная Осетия, Yuzhnaya Osetiya; Georgian:  Samkhreti Oseti) is a region in the South Caucasus, formerly the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Most of it has been de facto independent from Georgia since it declared independence^[2] as the Republic of South Ossetia early in the 1990s during the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. The capital of the region is Tskhinvali.

The independence was diplomatically recognized by the Russian Federation on August 26, 2008 and by the de facto independent republics of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Transnistria. So far, no other member of the United Nations has recognized the republic.