In 2020, Arsen Khamitsaev made it as far as the Truso Valley, but failed to reach the village where his family was born, citing restrictions that began near the Taranjeloz shrine.
‘[The Georgian border guards] spoke very politely. They said: “we cannot let you through. We have orders” ’, Khamitsaev tells OC Media. ‘You can go as far as Abano, walk around and look around — there is no problem. But further inside, where the Taranjeloz shrine begins, it’s closed. Practically all the people who lived there lived above this shrine’
Khamitsaev’s family originates from Desi, an Ossetian village in the valley. His family left Truso in 1948, and he now lives in North Ossetia’s capital, Vladikavkaz.
Today, Khamitsaev explains, entering the area requires special permission which can only be obtained through the Georgian interests section at the Embassy of Switzerland in Moscow. While some people have been able to enter the valley this way, many others remain unable to visit their ancestral homes.
Parts of the Truso Valley fall within Georgia’s border zone, meaning special entry rules apply. Anyone intending to travel along the strictly restricted routes in the area must obtain a special border permit, including Georgian citizens.
‘[The walls of the family house in Desi] are in a very bad condition. I was looking at my house through binoculars, and it was heartbreaking to see what had happened to it’, Khamitsaev says, emphasising that his connection to Truso is personal, and that he sees the valley as more than simply a piece of land.
The issue is not unique. Thousands of ethnic Georgians displaced by the conflicts of the 1990s and 2008 also remain unable to return to their homes or visit family members’ graves in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
‘This is my homeland; my ancestors were born there’, Khamitsaev says. ‘Living there is very difficult. The winters are so harsh that people of the modern generation would not be able to live there. But it is the call of our ancestors, the call of blood. There are shrines there. For Ossetians, a shrine is more than a church is for a Christian or a mosque is for a Muslim. It is much more sacred. There should be no restrictions on visiting your ancestral village’, he concludes.
The question of access to the Truso Valley was raised again at the latest round of the Geneva International Discussions, where South Ossetian representatives accused Georgia of restricting ethnic Ossetians’ access to their ancestral lands. Georgian security experts, however, argue that the issue cannot be separated from security concerns.
Visiting the places their ancestors left behind
The Truso Valley is located in Georgia’s Kazbegi Municipality, bordering the Russian republic of North Ossetia to the north and South Ossetia to the west. For generations, Ossetian families lived in the valley.
Though it falls under control of the Georgian Government, many Ossetians dispute that control.
‘Historically, Truso was always part of Ossetia’, Timur Tskhurbati, a civil society activist from Tskhinvali (Tskhinval), South Ossetia, says. ‘But after the [1917] revolution things changed.’
‘However, the Ossetians were not expelled from the valley; they left themselves because life in the mountains was difficult, and Vladikavkaz was close by. They continued to visit the graves of their ancestors’, Tskhurbati tells OC Media.
Even after leaving, the connection between people from Truso and the valley has remained strong, he says.
‘I know people from Truso who are very angry with Georgia because they are not allowed to enter’, he adds.
Tskhurbati has also criticised the authorities in Tskhinvali for closing the crossings between South Ossetia and Tbilisi controlled territory.
‘People need to communicate. When people stop talking to each other, resentment builds up’, he says.
Tskhurbati highlights that while Ossetians are not particularly religious, sites like Taranjeloz still hold a strong influence in society.
‘It is seen as a Christian shrine, but at the same time, I would say it was a sacred place even before Christianity.’
Despite the restrictions, Ossetian pilgrims have managed to return to the valley several times in recent years.
In autumn 2021, a group of 10 people originally from Truso Valley travelled there, accompanied by Georgian police officers and representatives of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Russian outlet Osnova reported.
A second trip took place in June 2022 and was timed to coincide with the Ossetian religious festival Uatsilla. Heavy flooding and damaged bridges, however, prevented the group from continuing into the valley.
A third trip took place in September 2023, when 23 people from six Ossetian families travelled to visit ancestral graves and the Alardy shrine. The visit took around two months to coordinate and involved Russia’s Foreign Ministry, the Russian Interests Section at the Swiss Embassy in Georgia, and the Georgian government.
The visits show that access to the valley is not completely closed, but that travelling there requires prior coordination and, at times, assistance from Georgian authorities.
But the question of return has also become intertwined with a broader political dispute over the status of the valley.
Truso’s contested story
Conflict analyst Zurab Bendiashvili tells OC Media that since the term of former South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity (2001–2011), South Ossetian authorities have increasingly laid claim on the Truso Valley as well as other neighbouring areas.
According to Tskhinvali, until recently, the Truso Valley was home to 13 Ossetian villages, in which 25 towers, as well as 15 shrines, have been partly or fully preserved. They also argue that Ossetians lived in 11 villages in the neighbouring Gudauri, now a popular ski resort, referring to it as Gudo, and in the Kobi basin, which had nine villages.
Bendiashvili notes that two public movements, Dariyal and Vozvrashcheniye (‘Return’), were also created under Kokoity’s term with the aim of returning the Truso Valley to South Ossetia.
Similar narratives have only increased since then.
In a 2019 interview with the German newspaper Neues Deutschland, then-South Ossetian Foreign Minister Dmitry Medoev described Truso, Kobi, and Gudauri as ‘historical Eastern Ossetia’. He claimed that during the Soviet period, these territories were separated from South Ossetia against the will of the Ossetian people and came under Georgian control.
Medoev also said that returning the territories was a goal of the Ossetian people, saying that ‘sooner or later these lands will return to Ossetia and Ossetians will live there’.
Speaking with OC Media, Tskhurbati notes that the question of whether Truso belongs to South Ossetia had even been discussed in the South Ossetian Parliament, of which he was a member. He argues that the way Soviet authorities drew administrative borders contributed to the current territorial claims.
‘Leningor (Akhalgori) was always Georgia. There were many Ossetians there, but they were not the majority; the majority were Georgians’ Tskhurbati says. ‘During Soviet times, there was this stupid practice of trying to change the composition of the population. Instead of, for example, adding the Truso Valley, they added Leningor District so that there would be more Georgians in South Ossetia’, he says.
Despite being part of the Soviet South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast, before the August 2008 War, the Akhalgori district remained under Georgian government control. Since then, it has been controlled by the authorities in Tskhinvali.
Tskhurbati says that he and others had even discussed a possible exchange: Akhalgori would remain with Georgia while Truso would become part of South Ossetia.
‘We were even ready to say: “Let’s somehow negotiate with Georgia. Let Leningor be theirs, and Truso be ours, and let’s exchange them.” For Ossetians, it was morally more pleasing, even without a population there, because Taranjeloz is there — our sacred place. We did not make a claim to Leningor in spirit’, he says.
Tskhurbati acknowledges that the situation has changed since the war, with many Ossetians since moving to the area.
‘You know how it happens: there are many Ossetians living in Georgia who have become Georgian. The same thing happened in Leningor. Many Georgians became Ossetian, and now Ossetians are the majority. And, of course, nobody will give it up now.’
In comparison, Davit Khvadagiani, a historian and researcher at the Soviet Past Research Laboratory, a Tbilisi-based think-tank, believes that the territorial claims being made over these areas are politically motivated and have no historical basis.
‘The de facto administration is not an independent actor; the Kremlin is the main initiator and “conductor” of the process’, Khvadagiani tells OC Media.
He, along with security specialist and former MP Teona Akubardia, argues that the issue cannot be separated from the wider territorial dispute.
Speaking with OC Media, Akubardia argues that the territorial claims concerning Kazbegi and the Truso Valley became more prominent after the August 2008 War and should be viewed as part of Russia’s broader political and information strategy.
‘No matter how Tskhinvali’s regime changes its tactics — from making territorial claims to presenting the issue as a humanitarian or human rights matter — it is connected to our country’s national security’, Akubardia says.
Indeed, beyond its historical and cultural significance, the valley also occupies a strategically important location, close to Georgia’s border with Russia and South Ossetia and near the Georgian Military Road.
At the same time, beyond the security concerns, Bendiashvili believes that a permanent return to the valley is unrealistic because there are no conditions for people to live there.
‘If you look at it objectively, returning there is unimaginable. There are absolutely no means or conditions for living there, and it clearly had the smell of a political provocation’, he says.
For conflict analyst Paata Zakareishvili, however, the issue is part of a much bigger problem.
‘As we often say when Georgian citizens are not allowed into the Tskhinvali region to visit the graves of their family members: Ossetians refuse to let us into Tskhinvali, and we refuse to let them into the Truso Valley. I don’t think this is right’, Zakareishvili tells OC Media.
Akubardia similarly states that she would support visits by Ossetian pilgrims only if they were subject to strict security checks and, crucially, if Georgian citizens were given a similar opportunity to visit their relatives’ graves in South Ossetia.
OC Media contacted Georgia’s Foreign Ministry with questions about access to the Truso Valley for Ossetian families and pilgrims, but did not receive a response. OC Media also contacted representatives of other fields in South Ossetia to hear their perspectives on the issues raised in this story, but all those contacted refused to speak on the matter.
For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.