South Ossetia does not issue visas. Moreover, the region has yet to establish an accurately operating procedure for obtaining entry permits. Visitors are required to get an entry permit, which is not a document, but a phone call from the ministry of Foreign Affairs to the checkpoint in Upper Ruk village. The KGB (Committee of State Security) controls all visits to South Ossetia by foreign tourists, that is why tourists can visit South Ossetia only when accompanied by a local guide at all times.

Shortly after the events of 2008 we decided to conduct a detailed survey of the then new Caucasian republics and Nagorno-Karabakh with a similar status. But as we had already been in Abkhazia and Karabakh, South Ossetia was a genuine “white spot on the map”, and for many it still remains one…