Moscow Justifies Legal Links with Abkhazia, S.Ossetia

Moscow’s decision to establish legal links with Abkhazia and South Ossetia is not aimed at “establishing control” over the breakaway regions, but rather at protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens living in these regions, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
 
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on April 29 justifying its move, citing the need to improve the socio-economic conditions of residents in the breakaway regions.
 
“Today carrying out control and legal regulation by the de facto authorities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia on these territories allows for the maintenance of elementary order, the carrying out of the struggle with criminality, making commercial and household deals,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Commenting on its decision to recognize legal acts of the de facto authorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia the Russian Foreign Ministry said: “International law recognizes that illegality of this or that governmental body does not automatically result in invalidity of acts issued by this body.” In this context the Foreign Ministry cited a 2001 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights into the case Cyprus v. Turkey, in particular acts issued by the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry also said: “Recognition of certain legal acts of these [de facto] authorities [in Abkhazia and South Ossetia] is not connected with recognition of their status.”

It also said that establishing direct ties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia was the only way to provide assistance to these regions in light of Tbilisi’s inability to perform its “state functions” there.

The Russian president’s April 16 instructions also instructs the Russian Foreign Ministry’s local representations in the Krasnodar district (at the Abkhaz border) and in Russia’s North Ossetian Republic (at the border with South Ossetia) to perform, if necessary, consular functions by providing assistance to residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Foreign Ministry said that it has a right “to define the functions of its own bodies independently.”