Protests lead to another president out the door in South Caucasus

As protestors in Georgia continue their still-unsuccessful, weeks-long effort to force their government to announce new elections under international supervision, recent demonstrations in Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia proved successful in forcing the de-facto president, Aslan Bzhania, to submit his resignation to parliament amidst a political crisis over a controversial agreement with Russia.

In effect, this amounts to yet another instance of street power pushing the de-facto authorities out of office in Abkhazia, reminiscent of similar events in both 2014 and 2020.

While a political crisis in Abkhazia may seem far removed from American interests, over the last year Western analysts, media, and official circles were abuzz with the reports that Russia was planning to build a naval base on Abkhazia’s Black Sea coastline. Developments in the strategically located South Caucasus have the potential to reverberate far and wide, and therefore must not be overlooked.

The proximate cause of this crisis was a controversial investment agreement between Sukhumi and Moscow that was signed by the two economy ministers at the end of October without the de-facto parliament’s approval. That agreement was set to be discussed in the de-facto legislature on November 15. That day, however, a large group of protesters were able to storm and occupy government office buildings in the Sukhumi. Protestors began demanding the unconditional resignation of Bzhania who sought to push through the protocol that many ethnic Abkhaz have long viewed as a threat to their position in the republic.

The Russo-Abkhaz agreement mainly concerns land provisions, extended tax holidays, and duty-free imports of building materials for investment projects amongst other preferential economic incentives. While the de-facto authorities in Sukhumi stress the importance of the agreement to further develop the Black Sea statelet, critics are worried that such a move will undermine local economic interests in favor of Russian and other business elites, especially in the lucrative tourism sector.

(Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the resulting restrictions on Western travel, the Black Sea has regained its Soviet era allure for Russian vacationers, and therefore investors).

Unfortunately in the Western media, following the Soviet Union’s demise in the early 1990s most discussion of those resulting quasi-states (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnitria, and Nagorno-Karabakh) have more often than not lacked any historical nuance or balanced reporting.

While the proposed agreement might seem anodyne from an outsider’s perspective, one must remember the peculiarities of Abkhazia’s demography and history. During the 19th century as the Russian empire was conquering the Caucasus, many of the region's different ethnic groups, including the Abkhaz, offered fierce resistance. Throughout those decades, tens of thousands of Abkhaz were evicted – mostly to the Ottoman Empire, where a large diaspora still lives – as a result of their opposition to Tsarist rule.

As several Western scholars have written, “the eviction of Abkhazians radically altered the demography in Abkhazia.” It can also be said that this period left a strong wariness towards Russian encroachment, even though today Moscow is Abkhazia’s most important partner in its continued resistance to Georgian rule.

Over the last century or so the Abkhaz polity has in one form or another maintained an autonomous or independent status. In 1921 it was consumed by the nascent Bolshevik movement following decades of imperial Russian domination prior to that. During the Soviet era the Abkhaz polity predominantly existed as an “autonomous republic” within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic between 1931-1992 (though the Abkhaz Supreme Soviet passed a declaration in the summer of 1990 “On Abkhazia’s State Sovereignty”).

According to the imperial Russian census of 1897, 55 percent of the population of Abkhazia spoke Abkhaz as their mother tongue, while 24 percent spoke Georgian languages. Due to immigration of Georgians and others under Soviet rule, by the Soviet census of 1989, 45 percent of the population spoke Georgian and only 17 percent Abkhaz, while Armenians and Russians each represented 14 percent. This new reality had only further compounded the Abkhaz’s fears of ethnic proportions and land ownership.

As the Soviet Union began to unwind (in no small part due to the pressures of ethno-nationalist movements), the Abkhaz saw an opportunity to once again reclaim their independent status and to protect their identity. However, these ambitions unsurprisingly, but most devastatingly, came into direct conflict with Georgia’s own powerful nationalist movement which sought to assert its control.

This clash ultimately resulted in the Georgian-Abkhaz War of 1992-93 and the ensuing forced displacement of almost the entirety of the estimated 240,000 Georgians living in Abkhazia. Since then, Abkhazia has been outside of Tbilisi’s reach and has functioned as a de facto independent state under Russian military protection.

However, Abkhazia (and South Ossetia, Georgia’s other breakaway territory) is extremely dependent on Russia in the security, political, financial, and economic spheres. This is especially due to the fact that following Russia’s recognition of the independence of these de facto republics in 2008 (following Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia in August of that year in a failed attempt to reconquer the territory), Moscow has been their main ally and access point to international markets. Meanwhile, relations with Georgia — their “parent state” — remain extremely limited.

Russia, taking advantage of its dominant position in September of this year suspended the financing of some payments to Abkhazia. This followed Sukhumi’s withdrawal over the summer of a previously controversial bill that would have opened up the Abkhazian real estate market to Russian buyers. In the words of Sergei Shamba, a veteran politician, diplomat and current de facto foreign minister in Abkhazia, Moscow’s action was in response to Sukhumi’s “failure to meet obligations.”

Previously, following the change of power in 2014 Abkhazia had signed a controversial strategic partnership agreement with Russia that significantly enhanced the relationship between the two, including a focus on strengthening the military and economic link. Moscow has long been pushing Abkhazia to open up its territory and economy for outside investment.

While de-facto presidential elections were initially planned for March 2025, they will now be brought forward by several weeks.

Recent history would suggest that some variation of this investment agreement will pass at some point in the future – regardless of who wins the presidential campaign – given the statelet’s level of reliance on Moscow and the latter’s willingness to exact a cost for its continued support.

Nevertheless, it is important to note the still active role civil society and the political opposition plays in Abkhazia. While it might be easy to pejoratively label the territory as a Russian puppet (as many in the West and Georgia do), there has been and remains much autonomous spirit amongst the almost quarter million living in Abkhazia. Amidst the present international (and regional) upheaval the challenge of ensuring their titular national standing as well as their economic and property preservation may prove a serious test for the ethnic Abkhaz and the statelet itself in future.

For those in the West who seek an eventual agreement between Sukhumi and Tbilisi, it would be wise to take the time to understand these local realities and act accordingly, rather than believing in myths and creating self-fulfilling prophecies that ultimately lead to everyone’s detriment.