Igor Viktorovich Sanakoyev
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Igor Viktorovich Sanakoyev is the Premier of the self-proclaimed independent government of South Ossetia, a region of the Republic of Georgia. His government is not recognized by any other government as being sovereign, but he and his predecessors have effectively ruled this region for the last decade and a half.
The Ossetian crisis began with the collapse of the former Soviet Union. The newly independent government of Georgia was dominated by Gerogian nationalists. One of their measures was to declare Georgian to be the official language throughout the land, leading to a fear among the Ossetians of becoming essentially foreginers within their own land. Fighting, fierce at first, has lessened in recent years as the Georgian central government has largely left South Ossetians to their own affairs, but now seems inevitable again with the election of a new Georgian government determined to reassert its sovereignty throughout the country, and Sanakoyev reportedly has now put his breakaway government on a "war footing" again.