Talk:Proposed Russian annexation of South Ossetia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Proposed Russian annexation of South Ossetia article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

International relations Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject International relations, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of International relations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.International relationsWikipedia:WikiProject International relationsTemplate:WikiProject International relationsInternational relations articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Politics Low‑importance

	Politics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Georgia (country) Top‑importance

	Georgia (country) portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Georgia (country), a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Georgia and Georgians on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Georgia (country)Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (country)Template:WikiProject Georgia (country)Georgia (country) articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Ossetia (inactive)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ossetia, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.OssetiaWikipedia:WikiProject OssetiaTemplate:WikiProject OssetiaOssetia articles

Russia High‑importance

	Russia portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Russia, a WikiProject dedicated to coverage of Russia on Wikipedia. To participate: Feel free to edit the article attached to this page, join up at the project page, or contribute to the project discussion.RussiaWikipedia:WikiProject RussiaTemplate:WikiProject RussiaRussia articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Why is it called "annexation" and not "union"?[edit]

On the page of a proposed union of Romania and Moldova, they use the word "union", not "annexation". But here they call it "annexation". This just feels like taking sides and POV. Especially since this was literally proposed by the government of the country and that most people there want that too. 2A02:8428:96F9:CF01:714D:B0A3:45F:20A2 (talk) 21:29, 11 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's illegal. Like the existence of South Ossetia. Georgia hasn't recognized its independence. Super Ψ Dro 22:01, 11 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's not NPOV though. Whether it's legal or not is definitely up to debate, because some UN members disagree, and for example with Kosovo, it's not recognised by the UN either yet it's not called annexation. The independence of Kosovo was also declared illegal by Serbian constitution and the UN considers it to be Serbian territory, so by this logic the page Unification_of_Albania_and_Kosovo should also be called annexation. Wikipedia should be completely neutral and not just talk in the language of the US and the West, because this would not be neutral. That's why both South Ossetia and Kosovo are called partially recognised states and are treated the same on Wikipedia. 2A02:8440:820D:5C25:9442:14D1:795:6A5B (talk) 10:40, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's a better point, but I'd be sure most sources call the Kosovo-Albania movement "unification" while the Russian-South Ossetia one "annexation". You may argue this is because sources are biased, but there's no point discussing that here. Super Ψ Dro 15:10, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't this depend on the kinds of sources tho? Maybe it's just English speaking sources? I suppose Russian speaking sources will call it unification in Ossetia and Serbian sources will call it annexation in Kosovo.

Of course, unfortunately, most Russian sources are indeed not only biased but even unreliable (like Russia today) but it doesn't mean that they're all like this. The Russian editions of Euronews and DW used the word "присоединение" which is closer to the word "unification" than "annexation". This might be due to the fact that in Russian, the word "annexation" (аннексия) is very rarely used and way more controversial than in English (Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire will never be called an annexation. Keep in mind I'm talking about the empire not the recent events), but still, that's something to keep in mind to look if this title is NPOV or not. 2A02:8428:2529:3401:A18A:9221:B053:8AB (talk) 20:45, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As this is English Wikipedia, sources in English are the ones that are given attention. The only exception to this is when there's few or no sources in English because the subject is obscure, but that's not the case. This is what I meant with that sources might be biased, as it is expected English-language sources will use a certain language for Russia-related topics and another for the West-related ones. If I do the Google search "russia" "south ossetia" "unification" -wikipedia (the latter thing removes all results from wikipedia.org, in any language), I get 34,000 results, but if I search "russia" "south ossetia" "annexation" -wikipedia, I get 253,000. Results vary from country to country but not to an extent that could make the word unification majoritary in use. So according to Wikipedia policy such as WP:COMMONNAME, "annexation" would be the appropriate word here. Super Ψ Dro 19:56, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]