Abkhazia is a Russian ‘Protectorate’ – Abkhaz FM

Abkhazia is currently a Russian protectorate, which should eventually lead to the breakaway region’s recognition by Moscow, Sergey Shamba, the Abkhaz foreign minister, said in a newspaper article, Apsnipress reported on June 30.

“Recent developments lead one to say that Abkhazia is actually a Russian protectorate,” Shamba said in an article published in the local newspaper Pravda Abkhazii (Abkhazia’s Truth). “That is how we should understand the decree by President Putin [the April 16 decision] regulating relations between the Russian Federation and Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Russia’s earlier decision to withdraw from the 1996 CIS treaty restricting relations with Abkhazia.”

He also said that the current relationship between Russia and Abkhazia suggested the two were moving towards a U.S.-Taiwan type relationship.

“Taking into consideration Russia’s special role and interests in our region, it can also firmly state that it would respond with adequate measures in case of an attack by Georgia or in case of a threat to use force against Abkhazia, like the United States does [with Taiwan],” Shamba continued. “We consider this type of relationship with Russia as temporary and transitional, which should lay the foundation for a substantially new stage in relations. We have already laid out our proposals in this regard. They involve signing an inter-state agreement in the fields of military-political, customs, border guards, economic and cultural cooperation.”

He said such a relationship was becoming more important especially ahead of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games.

Shamba said that Kosovo’s recognition had given more legal ground to Russia to recognize Abkhazia; he, however, at the same time warned that such a scenario “has a time limit.”

“If Russia fails to react decisively, adequately and quickly [to Kosovo’s recognition], the favorable moment may be lost, because when the Kosovo issue stops being acute, reference to it will not be perceived appropriately,” Shamba writes.

Speaking in response to Russia’s April 16 decision to establish official links with Georgia’s breakaway regions, President Saakashvili said on April 23: “The Taiwanization scenario in respect of Georgia is total craziness."

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