Can you name the European dictator that invaded and absorbed territory in the name of allowing all its ethnic peoples to live under one unified state?
You could… you might see parallels:
“Tarzan Kokoity, the province’s Deputy Speaker of parliament, announced that South Ossetia would be absorbed into Russia soon so that its people could live in “one united Russian state” with their ethnic kin in North Ossetia.
The declaration came only three days after Russia defied international criticism and recognised South Ossetia and Georgia’s other separatist region of Abkhazia as independent states. Eduard Kokoity, South Ossetia’s leader, agreed that it would form part of Russia within “several years” during talks with Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian President, in Moscow.
How this violation of Georgian territorial integrity will be met by NATO — or more specifically, the European Union (and France, who brokered the cease fire) — will have far reaching implications for states such as Belarus, Ukraine, or any other nation with a sizeable Russian minority.