Sokhumi Says Reinforcing Border with Georgia

Authorities in breakaway Abkhazia said on April 8 that Abkhaz troops together with the Russian forces in the region were reinforcing border with Georgia, Abkhaz news agency, Apsnipress, reported.

The breakaway region’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the move came in response “to increasing provocations by the Georgian side and attempts to carry out terrorist acts in the border areas.”

Apsnipress reported that the decision also comes after the Georgian coast guard seized a Turkish vessel en-route from Sokhumi to Istanbul. Georgia said on April 7 that the vessel was seized in the Georgian territorial waters for “illegal crossing of Georgian territorial waters” in Abkhazia.

Also on April 8, authorities in breakaway Abkhazia said that its artillery forces had launched week-long exercises in lower part of Kodori Gorge with involvement of GRAD multiple rocket launchers.

Meanwhile, MP Akaki Minashvili of the ruling party and chairman of parliamentary committee for foreign affairs, said on April 8: “Some movement, wakening up of the Russian forces is being observed related with [the developments] in these days [reference to planned protest rallies] and it is a source of our concern and it is a challenge which we all – the authorities, the opposition, the people – have to tackle through our unity in order not to allow our external enemy, the northern neighbor to invade us.”

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