1991–1992 South Ossetia War place around the city in the nearby villages and along the road to North Ossetia. In spring 1992 the fighting escalated again, with sporadic Russian involvement. However, in March 1992, Gamsakhurdia was ousted and replaced by Eduard Shevardnadze. Soon after, Gamsakhurdia loyalists staged an armed rebellion. Furthermore, the conflict with Georgia's other, bigger, separatist region Abkhazia, escalated into a war in 1992. As a result, Shevardnadze had an interest in ending the conflict in South Ossetia and signed the Russian-brokered Sochi agreement. The ceasefire agreement left South Ossetia divided into areas controlled by Georgia and areas controlled by the unrecognised
Russia–South Ossetia relations percent of administrative buildings in Tskhinval were destroyed in the Georgian shelling of the city in 2008. On 30 August 2008, Tarzan Kokoity, the Deputy Speaker of South Ossetia's parliament, announced that the region would soon be absorbed into Russia, so that South and North Ossetians could live together in one united Russian state. Russian and South Ossetian forces began giving residents in Akhalgori, the biggest town in the predominantly ethnic Georgian eastern part of South Ossetia, the choice of accepting Russian citizenship or leaving. However, Eduard Kokoity, the then president of South Ossetia, later stated that South Ossetia would