The Five Steps to Russia program will be launched in separatist Tskhinvali/South Ossetia, which should create conditions for the republic to join the Russian Federation. This was announced by the de-facto president of separatist South Ossetia Anatoly Bibilov in an interview.

“This is not my whim; this is the desire of our people since the [1920s]. Ossetians are a divided people, and this division must be eliminated,” Bibilov added.

He noted that the support for unification of Ossetians is higher than the independence of South Ossetia. The head of the republic noted that the Ossetians did not secede from the Russian Empire, and during the collapse of the USSR, they voted in a referendum to become part of Russia.

Bibilov added that the authorities of the republic are striving to develop integration processes with the Russian Federation.

Earlier, the de-facto Presidium of the Parliament of South Ossetia rejected the inclusion of the issue of impeachment on the meeting agenda, despite opposition demands. Speaker of de-facto Parliament Alan Tadtaev called this initiative unreasonable. Nevertheless, a third of the deputies signed the letter on the procedure for removing the head of the republic from power, which is enough for parliament to consider.

The presidential representative in the de-facto parliament, Anna Kumaritova, reminded the deputies that impeachment cannot be carried out if there is no conclusion of the Supreme Court on the corpus delicti or a decision of the Constitutional Court on the observance of the impeachment procedure (there is no Constitutional Court itself in the separatist republic).