The test voyage of a new ferry that would connect the Russian city of Sochi with the Abkhazian capital Sukhumi (Sukhum) has taken place in an effort to revive a sea link between the two cities that has been interrupted since 1993.
According to the Russian Ministry of Transport, the Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, named after a Ukrainian-born fighter pilot and cosmonaut, will accommodate up to 120 passengers with a journey time of 2.5 hours across the 146-kilometre route.
Abkhazian President Badra Gunba and First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko met the ferry at Sukhumi port.
‘Today we will open another transport hub […] This is a very important area for building logistics capabilities’, Gunba said, calling the event historic.
Kiriyenko separately highlighted the ‘beautiful’ nature of a trip along the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia.
Details about the cost of the journey and the expected schedule have yet to be announced.
Sea service was interrupted between Sochi and Sukhumi as a result of the War in Abkhazia (1993–1994). There have been other recent attempts to revive the link across the Black Sea, including a 2022 catamaran that made two voyages, and a cruise liner that ran several times in 2023, but nothing has stuck as of yet.
Gunba and Kiriyenko announced plans to revive the regular route between the two cities during a meeting in July, though discussions regarding reviving the old Soviet-era sea route of the Kometa ships has been ongoing since at least 2023. That year, during a tourism forum in Sukhumi, the Vice-President of the Crimean Development Fund, Vasily Dyachenko, presented plans to connect Russian-occupied Crimea to Abkhazia via the cities of Gelendzhik–Novorossiysk–Sochi–Sokhumi.
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.
Elizaveta Chukharova
