Gunba says Moscow plans to build ‘technical support base’ for Russian Black Sea Fleet in Abkhazia

Abkhazian President Badra Gunba has said that Russia is not planning to construct a ‘military-naval base’ in Ochamchira (Ochamchire), but instead plans to ‘open a technical support base for [Russia’s] Black Sea Fleet’.

It was not immediately clear what the difference between the two would be, or if Gunba’s description of the plans simply represented a shift only in rhetoric.

Gunba made the comments in an interview with the Russian state-run media outlet TASS, adding that the agreements on the construction have already been signed.

The project will ‘strengthen’ the military partnership between Abkhazia and Russia, Gunba said.

If his comments can be taken at face value, they would represent a change in the official plans about the base.

The proposed base has generated significant controversy since former President Aslan Bzhaniya first announced in October 2023 that Russia would establish a naval base in Ochamchira, on Abkhazia’s Black Sea coast, ‘in the near future’.

In early 2024, Sergei Shamba, the head of Abkhazia’s Security Council, said the planned port was still in its design phase, but that he expected it to open sometime during 2024.

After Bzhaniya’s announcement of the naval base, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi vowed to strike Russian warships stationed in Abkhazia.

Prior to the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the bulk of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was harboured at the headquarters in the occupied Ukrainian city of Sevastopol in Crimea. However, it has since been hammered by Ukrainian drone and missile strikes, prompting Moscow to search for alternate places for the fleet to dock.

‘The Russian leader was forced to announce the creation of a new base for the Black Sea Fleet […] as far as possible from Ukrainian missiles and sea drones, but we will get them everywhere’, Zelenskyi said in October 2023.

In response, Bzhaniya accused Ukraine of wanting to ‘provoke a military situation in the Caucasus and unleash a new bloody war’.

Georgian officials have also objected to the base. However, Alexander Khrolenko, a journalist at the Russian state media outlet Sputnik, wrote that Russia ‘does not intend to threaten anyone’ from the planned naval base, noting that it would be located 300 kilometres away from Tbilisi.

The port in Ochamchira has been under Russian control since 2009 following the August 2008 War, and Russia has since used it for the construction of ships and boats and has protected it with its own border guards.

For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.

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In the video, Otari Kobakhidze spoke about the expulsion of his family from Abkhazia during the war in the 1990s.

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