S-Ossetia seems to want the old "bear" more than Georgia. Maybe out of fear. It's got no chance to stand on it's own legs. It's mostly living on subsistence farming and tunnel fee (between Russia and Georgia). The size of the country is very small (3.900 sq kilometres, - a little bigger than Luxemburg, and 1/25th of Iceland) and the inhabitants were some 100.000 (?), and unlike those mentioned, S-Ossetia is not sitting between economically well-off blocks. Greenland and the Faroe islands would be vastly better off as independent nations IMHO, with their odd 40.000-50.000 souls for the sheer reason of natural resources, yet these are not independent yet....
My guess is that they get gobbled by the old bear....