The flag is also used by the pro-Georgia Provisional Administrative Entity of South Ossetia, formerly based in Kurta, which opposes the separatist government in Tskhinvali.
It is connected to breakaway South Ossetia's capital Tskhinvali via a railroad spur which has been defunct since the early 1990s.
South Ossetia, an independent partially recognized republic in the South Caucasus, formerly the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic with its capital in Tskhinvali, held a referendum on independence on November 12, 2006.
The first level was proposed to include local leaders of the Tskhinvali separatist authorities and Dmitry Sanakoyev's Provisional Administrative Entity of South Ossetia.