The ways of communication are mysterious

Where will the railway to Abkhazia take Russia?

At the summit in St. Petersburg, Dmitry Medvedev will have a difficult conversation with Mikheil Saakashvili: the Georgian president will probably ask him what the introduction of Russian railway troops into unrecognized Abkhazia means . It is not easy to answer: from the point of view of international law, Abkhazia is part of Georgia, and the introduction of additional military contingent may well be regarded as an act of aggression.

Some Russian news agencies have already recalled the 2003 Russian-Georgian intergovernmental agreement regarding the restoration of railway communication between the countries and are pairing it with messages explaining the deployment of troops. This is hardly appropriate, since all movements regarding the implementation of this agreement ceased back in 2006, and it did not imply unilateral actions, especially by the military. Nevertheless, the topic of restoring the railway could theoretically be successfully played out by the new Russian leader.

The agreement on the restoration of the railway through Abkhazia envisaged the creation of a quadripartite consortium with the participation of Georgia and Russia - as directly interested parties, Ukraine - as an important foreign economic partner of Georgia, and Armenia - as a country for which this line could become another pass to outside world. In 2005, senior Abkhaz officials told Vremya Novostey that Russia was the first of the four countries to prepare to invest in the project. Georgia, for its part, began an engineering survey of what remained of the railway track east and south of Sukhumi, and collected the necessary archival documentation.

You can travel from Adler to the capital of the unrecognized state by train. But beyond Sukhumi there are not rails everywhere. In the Gali region, located near the actual border with Georgia, the roadbed has been completely dismantled, all that remains of the road is an embankment and stations drowning in subtropical vegetation.

Meanwhile, the railway through Abkhazia is one of two connecting Russia with the South Caucasus. The second passes through Dagestan to Baku, and Armenia, due to its difficult relations with Azerbaijan, is not able to use it.

For some time in Sukhumi it was believed that restoration and use of rails could be beneficial. But then fears came to the fore that fruits from Western Georgia would displace Abkhazian tangerines from the Russian market and that Georgian tanks would be able to travel by rail from Zugdidi to Sukhumi in just a couple of hours.

Now Dmitry Medvedev will have to convince the Georgian side that the restored road to Ochamchira is not needed to bring tanks and self-propelled artillery to Abkhazia. This will be quite difficult, since Tbilisi already accuses Moscow of violating the format of the peacekeeping mission. The Georgian side points out that, having replenished the ranks of its peacekeepers in Abkhazia in May, Russia introduced there not motorized riflemen, as required by the relevant decision of the Council of Heads of State of the CIS, but airborne paratroopers and heavy equipment. The scandal with the downed drone brought to the fore the topic of the Russian military base in the Abkhazian Gudauta. The base has long been supposed to be closed, and Russia has officially reported several times that it is so. But the plane that shot down the Georgian drone took off, judging by the expert data, right in Gudauta.

Explanations on the topic of preparing the Abkhaz transport infrastructure for large cargo flows associated with the 2014 Sochi Olympics (Abkhazia expects to supply an incredible amount of crushed stone to construction sites) are also unlikely to please Mikheil Saakashvili. Georgia, naturally, considers Abkhazia to be its part, and contracts for such supplies, from Tbilisi’s point of view, should have been at least formally discussed with the Georgian government.

And yet, if desired, the Russian head of state can paint his Georgian counterpart with a completely rosy prospect for restoring railway communication. Firstly, this would be entirely in the spirit of gradually lifting restrictions on trade and transport turnover between Russia and Georgia. Secondly, it would open up Western Georgia, which would find it much easier and cheaper to export its agricultural products to the outside world, even if Russia for now leaves some restrictions on Georgian imports in place. Thirdly, Russia could help Armenia, which it still considers as its main (in fact, only) South Caucasus ally, but which incurs enormous transport costs due to the fact that its only railway - to Georgia - ends in Zugdidi at a dead end. As, indeed, are all highways leading through Georgia to Russia.

Georgia is very closely involved in the project of the Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars railway, which should connect Azerbaijan, which wants to increase exports, and Georgia, which is striving to join NATO, with Turkey, the closest NATO member country. This road will expand the transport corridor from the Caspian region to the West, will finally turn this direction into a priority for the South Caucasus to the detriment of the problematic communication with Russia and will increase the transport isolation of Armenia - if, as planned, it is built bypassing its territory. True, the US State Department insists that Armenia be “connected” to this road, but stating such a goal is much easier than achieving it in reality: in order to take part in the project, Yerevan will have to make peace or at least agree to sit down at the table of serious negotiations with Ankara and Baku. And this still looks very unrealistic.

But in February of this year, Russian Railways OJSC took the Armenian railway network under concession management. Restoring communication through Abkhazia could logically complete this deal and change the current “island” position of the Armenian railways. Together with this line, Russia would largely restore its presence in the South Caucasus, which so far tends to decline. Ground communications with Armenia would be restored, where, among other things, the only officially existing base of Russian troops in Transcaucasia remains. The North-South transport corridor would be operational, which could contribute to a more diversified regional orientation of the economic space south of the Greater Caucasus Range and increase the degree of Russia’s participation in the economic life of neighboring countries.

These prospects look larger than the project for removing rubble from Abkhazia for the Olympics, the future of which may generally be called into question in the event of a further escalation of tension in the conflict zone. The unusually thickened military rhetoric in connection with Abkhazia, by the way, definitely harms the economy of the unrecognized republic, which Vladimir Putin, while still president, ordered to help.

Russia’s participation in the Abkhaz economy after Putin’s April orders is unlikely to become greater than it was before: the republic is in the ruble zone, Russia is the main market for agricultural products and, in fact, the only supplier of tourists, Russian entrepreneurs are buying real estate in Abkhazia and opening restaurants . Expecting them to come to the unrecognized republic more openly is hardly justified even after Putin’s decree. The majority still does not want to bear the image risks associated with opening full-fledged representative offices in Abkhazia and jeopardize their reliable positions in Georgia. But every television news about a downed plane - it doesn’t even matter who shot down whose plane - leaves Abkhazia without a thousand or two tourists who are unlikely to go to sunbathe where the planes are shot down.

However, it is too early to make far-reaching plans: JSC Russian Railways announced yesterday that it is not participating in the restoration of tracks in Abkhazia. Therefore, this is not a civil case. In his recent interview with Le Monde, Vladimir Putin admitted that he was personally involved in this issue. And now President Medvedev will have to at least explain to his Georgian counterpart whether the Russian railway troops are subordinate to their commander in chief.

Ivan SUKHOV