Have you never taken a Human Geography class? Most of the population in S Ossetia are RUSSIAN. Just because they don't live in Russia doesn't mean they aren't Russians.
I hate to dissappoint you but that school you took your geographical classes at was probably a bad one.
You can rest assured the most of the population in South Ossetia are the Ossetians who feel close to Russia rather than Georgia. You should either stick to your own ethnical views and tell me where to get off with this sort of information regardless of that I have been to Ossetia twice in my life, or just believe me (that S Ossetia is inhabited by the Ossetians, nearly 100,000 people).
Unlike a Russian man, a pure Ossetian has a dark complexion, always black hair, brown eyes, an aquiline nose, speaking his own Ossetian language but all the Ossetians speak Russian perfectly too. They seem to have always been at daggers drawn with the Georgians who want the Ossetian territory.
Come and visit the Caucases mountains and see it with your own eyes. You will like the place with many waterfalls and big wild birds hovering in the skies.
If you ask a common man in the street in any Russian city and town, most of the Russians regard the Ossetians as their friends. Then what should Russia have done in that situation? It is understandable why the Russian government's policy over that issue is so much supported by its people in the country, whether you like it or not.
Either come for help to your friends and get labelled as Invader and Aggressor for the others aside, or turn your friends away and become a despicable traitor for deliberately failing to protect them form the fierce Georgian attacks.
Tshinvali, the capital of S Ossetia, is in ruins like Stalingrad with hundreds of dead under rubble (THE TRUE FACT). No one at any forum in the net is intrested why. Who made that? Who ruined Tshinvali? Who murdered those hundreds or maybe over a thousand (no one cares of the exact toll)?