Translated material
Georgian defrost
They're shooting again in Abkhazia
An armed incident in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone on Thursday night brought new victims. Georgian special forces pursued the attackers who stole a car and were heading towards the unrecognized republic. At the administrative border, a shootout ensued with Abkhaz border guards, who, according to the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs, were in collusion with the hijackers. An Abkhaz soldier was killed and a Georgian officer was seriously wounded.The plenipotentiary representative of the President of Abkhazia in the Gali region bordering Western Georgia, Ruslan Kishmaria, compared what happened with the incident on September 20. Then Georgian special forces in the mountains of Abkhazia shot two instructors of the Abkhaz army from among the retired Russian military and captured seven border guards. “Georgia's desire to unfreeze the conflict can lead to dangerous consequences,” Kishmaria said.
The situation in conflict zones will be considered by the summit of the Community of States for Democracy and the Rights of Peoples, which will be held from October 30 to November 2 in Sukhumi. First, the foreign ministers of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria will meet, and then the presidents of these unrecognized republics. At the observer level, the presence of representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh is possible.
Foreign Minister of Abkhazia Sergei Shamba told Vremya Novostei that participants in the community created last year are going to coordinate their actions. In anticipation of a resolution on the status of Kosovo, these consultations are acquiring increased importance. Each of the self-proclaimed republics of the post-Soviet space believes that it has no less rights to recognition than this Serbian region.
The head of Abkhazia, Sergei Bagapsh, planned to visit Turkey a few days before the summit - there lives an influential diaspora of half a million people from Abkhazia, whose support he wanted to enlist. However, Ankara decided not to irritate Tbilisi and, according to Turkish media, under pressure from Georgian diplomats, asked Mr. Bagapsh to cancel the visit. Minister Shamba assures that the reason is different - due to the worsening relations between Turkey and Iraq, the Abkhaz side considered Sergei Bagapsh’s trip “incorrect.”