4th Guards Military Base

Russia set up the 4th Guards Military Base in Tskhinvali in February 2009, six months after the Russo-Georgian War ended with South Ossetia effectively cut off from Tbilisi's control. The base absorbed two existing brigades, the 693rd Guards and the 135th Motorized Rifle, and slotted into the 58th Combined Arms Army under the Southern Military District. A formal agreement followed in April 2010, took effect the next year, and locked in the terms for decades: 49 years, renewable in 15-year blocks, no rent charged. Georgia calls the whole arrangement an occupation. Russia calls it a defense pact with an independent state it recognizes and Georgia doesn't.

Troop estimates move around depending on who's counting — somewhere between 3,000 and 4,500 personnel, spread mainly across Tskhinvali and the town of Java, with a training ground north of the city at Dzartsem. Since 2012, the base has run an Ossetian Battalion, recruiting locally so South Ossetian residents can serve without leaving the region. That local pipeline didn't keep the base out of Russia's war in Ukraine, though. In March 2022, reports surfaced that units from the 4th base, contractors included, had shipped out to fight.

The base kept growing rather than shrinking. Local officials confirmed expansion plans in October 2024, tied to a new military-technical cooperation agreement working its way through the Russian State Duma — timed, South Ossetian spokesman Yuri Vazagov said, to the "complex and controversial trends" unfolding in both Georgia and Armenia. Politics in Tskhinvali itself shifted more recently still. President Alan Gagloev resigned in June 2026, handing the office to acting president Marat Kambolov — a reminder that whatever happens in South Ossetia's government, the base and its Russian garrison aren't going anywhere.