[levosmetalo]

> Same goes for South Ossetia and Transnistria: these conflicts would long be history without Russian military footholds.

You mean "history" in a sense that the local population would be ethnically cleansed from the Georgian majority and the ones that survive relocated to Russia? And then they would be marked as aggressors because they dared to try protecting themselves with arms, and refused to just disappear from the territory where they have been living for centuries.

Yeah, we saw that many times, and the only criteria that leads to the "correct" conclusion who is right and who is wrong, who is aggressor and who defends himself, who is the victim and who is villain is whether US/NATO or Russian/Other troops are involved on one of the sides.

[varjag]

No, I mean they would continue to live on the territory they lived for centuries (somehow without apparently being ethnically cleansed by Georgians all that damn time). And without Russian involvement it would have long since went into participatory politics.

And it's not just a speculation, there was a perfect A/B test. Ajaria, another autonomous region of Georgia, long since had independence ambitions too. However that conflict fizzed out without notable violence.

The difference from Ossetia? It does not border Russia and there weren't substantial troops stationed at the time of USSR dissolution.