After the 92-94 war, the relations between Ossetia and georgia are about as good as the ones between Bosnia and Serbia, this makes getting someone to agree to "autonomys" quite unlikely.


Considering "picking fights":
85% of South Ossetias population have Russian passports. Russian peace keeping troops (who were there with a completely legal mandate signed by Georgia too) were killed during the initial georgian advance.

If there were "peace keeping troops" than there was a "peace agreement" which likely did not feature an allowance for Georgia to suprise attack the Ossetian Capital.

Although Georgia may have had a fairly legitimate reason of going to war, they cannot really complain about
a) the other side firing back
b) official allies (Abkhazia) of the other side fullfilling their treaty obligations and
c) Russia interfering in a fight where its citizens (the majority of South Ossetias inhabitants sport a Russian Passport) are attacked and where it legally operating peace keeping troops were killed. Apart from its interests and its reputation beeing at stake apart from Russia having officially warned them.



Of course Russia has power reasons, but they have a fairly legitimate cause here I think.