After the breakup of the Soviet Union, three regions of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia sought to breakaway: South Ossetia sought unification with North Ossetia, an oblast in the Russian Federation; Abkhazia sought outright independence from the Georgian state, and Ajaria eventually accepted moderate autonomy within the Georgian state. The UN became the primary third party engaged in the dispute with Abkhazia, while the OSCE assumed primary responsibility for the conflict with South Ossetia. The OSCE mission in Georgia and the OSCE Office on Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) engaged as a third party in an effort to promote autonomy for South Ossetia within the Georgian state, in line with the OSCE Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris. These efforts largely failed when the Russian army entered South Ossetia in 2008, ostensibly in response to Georgia’s attack on targets in Tskhinvali, the capital city, and the region fell outside the de facto control of the Georgian government in Tbilisi. Subsequently, the OSCE established the “‘Ergneti’ Incident and Response Mechanism,” meeting at regular intervals in Tskhinvali to try to prevent further violent escalation, without a mandate to try to resolve the political status of the region.