On 16 March 2022, local South Ossetian and Russian media outlets reported that units of the 4th Guards Military Base, including local Ossetian contract servicemen, were sent to join the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, they were organized into three battalion tactical groups, with a total number of 1,200 Russian and Ossetian servicemen, for the deployment in Ukraine. Ossetians being sent as part of the Russian troops in Ukraine was confirmed, on 20 March 2022, by South Ossetia's leader Anatoly Bibilov, who said, responding to critics, that he was not the one to "give the order", but he supported the deployment. On 30 March, South Ossetian social media channels, local bloggers, and politicians such as the former de facto president Eduard Kokoity reported that many Ossetian servicemen — up to 300, according to one source — had abandoned the Ukrainian battlefields, returning home "of their own free will".
