Lavrov's statement is being held up as another example of Russia's aggressive action towards their southern neighbor, but it's more an acceptance of reality than anything else.
Georgia has not controlled either place since the early 1990's when both of the territories fought wars for their independence. While no nations (not even Russia) recognized their claims, South Ossetia and Abkhazia set up governments and managed their affairs with no input from the Georgian government in Tbilisi for much of the past two decades. Mikhail Saakashvili made bringing the two rebel provinces back under Georgian control a key goal of his government when he was elected president.
His bid to use military force to bring South Ossetia to heel though failed miserably. It's hard to imagine the Ossetians ever accepting Georgian rule after the Georgian military leveled much of their capital Tskhinvali, and the failed attack showed that Georgia lacks the military power to force South Ossetia back into the fold.
It's hard to say there can be an upside to a war where hundreds (if not a couple of thousand) have been killed, and many, many more driven from their homes, but if there is its that there will now have to be some final resolution on the status of these two places, something that has languished in the international community for the past 15 years (Abkhazia and South Ossetia are two of the several “frozen conflicts” as they have come to be known in the lands of the old Soviet Union – small wars for independence where the fighting stopped, but the underlying decision of independence for the areas in question have not been answered) .
It really shouldn't be difficult, the recognition of Kosovo by the United States and Western European powers (France, Germany and the UK) earlier this year should set the precedent for the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Of course the problem is that Kosovo was carved out of Serbia, a country the western powers don't particularly like, while Abkhazia and South Ossetia would have to be pared from Georgia, the current darling of the West. Officials from the United States government insisted that Kosovo isn't a precedent for other would-be independent states, but never really explain why, other than because they say so. If anything Serbia's historic claim to Kosovo is much stronger than Georgia's claim to South Ossetia. The Ossetians lived in that particular corner of the Caucasus for hundreds of years before the Soviet Union and later Russia/Georgia drew an arbitrary border across their lands. It's much the same for Abkhazia, which has enjoyed various degrees of independence for the past few hundred years before becoming part of the newly-minted state of Georgia. In all three cases the areas in question acted as independent states within larger states.
Abkhazia, with its long Black Sea coastline that made it a favorite vacation spot among the old Soviet elite, has the resources to become a successful independent state. It’s harder to imagine that for little landlocked South Ossetia, though that fact didn’t stand in the way of little landlocked Kosovo.
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