A LITTLE PIECE OF POLAND, A LITTLE PIECE OF FRANCE: In Russia’s ‘Frozen Zone,’ a Creeping Border With Georgia.

Mr. Tatiashvili’s troubles started early in the summer when earth-moving equipment turned up without warning and started digging a wide track through an apple orchard and a field of wildflowers on the edge of the village. He was out at the time, so he avoided being trapped.

“It is too dangerous for me to go home,” he said, complaining that the boundary has become so mobile that nobody really knows its final destination. Mr. Tatiashvili now lives in his brother’s house, away from the border in the village center.

The destitute mountainous area of South Ossetia first declared itself independent from Georgia in 1990, but nobody outside the region paid much attention until Russia invaded in August 2008 and recognized South Ossetia’s claims to statehood. With that, the territory joined Abkhazia in western Georgia, the Moldovan enclave of Transnistria and eastern Ukraine as a “frozen zone,” an area of Russian control within neighboring states, useful for things like preventing a NATO foothold or destabilizing the host country at opportune moments.

Russia has been annexing little bits of Georgia in this manner since at least 2014.