Supporters of Alla Jioyeva, an opposition candidate who won in now annulled presidential runoff, erected several tents on Tskhinvali’s central square outside the government building on Thursday evening vowing to stand their ground.

“Our protest rally turned into a permanent one,” said Anatoly Barankevich, the breakaway region’s former secretary of national security council, who is Jioyeva’s one of the key allies.

“We are setting up tents now and we will be staying here before achieving annulment of the Supreme Court’s decision” which invalidated the November 27 runoff results, he added.

The government building is sealed off by special task forces armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

On Thursday Jioyeva continued talks with the Kremlin senior official, Sergey Vinakurov, who was sent by the Moscow on Wednesday to try settle post-election dispute.

Jioyeva’s comments after the talks suggested that no agreement had been reach; she declined to discuss details of the talks. Some Russian news agencies reported that the Kremlin official was planning to leave Tskhinvali and return to Moscow on Friday.