Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Putin

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summeride, PEI] Journal Pioneer

In my winter 2019 Russian politics course at UPEI, we discussed the breakaway regions of Transnistria (which seceded from Moldova), and Abkhazia and South Ossetia (who both separated from Georgia).

You can make the case that in these instances, as well as the Donetsk and Luhansk issues in eastern Ukraine, now governed by pro-Moscow politicians, everything Russian president Vladimir Putin has done is a reaction to prior moves on the part of Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine. The same can be said about the Crimea, also contested between Russia and Ukraine.

Egged on by the late U.S. Senator John McCain, the then Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in 2008 decided to forcibly grab Abkhazia and South Ossetia; they were not ethnically Georgian and had never wanted to be Georgian.

Following the dissolution of the decrepit USSR in 1991, they had successfully escaped Tbilisi's control and declared their independence. But Georgia never recognized this and plotted their reconquest.

Only after beating Georgia in a short war that the latter began in 2008 -- something the meddlers in Washington and Brussels were of course angry about -- did Moscow recognize these two regions as states.

However, given the continued designs on them by Georgia, in order to survive they have had to become de facto Russian protectorates.

Unlike the Crimea, which is ethnically Russian and was part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (today’s Russian Federation) itself, until handed to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic 1954, Putin did not incorporate Abkhazia and South Ossetia into the Russian Federation.

As for the Crimea, he left it in Ukrainian hands until the 2014 coup in Kyiv by right-wing anti-Russian Ukrainians.

He has also aided the Russian and pro-Russian population in the Donbas region who fear the Kyiv regime -- but here, too, he has not annexed them to Russia and still considers them legally Ukrainian.

He wants the regime in Kyiv to recognize their rights, perhaps by giving them a measure of autonomy, and not treat them as fifth columnists.

Moscow is trying to protect the millions of ethnic Russians now found in the “near abroad” – the former Soviet republics outside the Russian Federation.

Moscow is also concerned about ethnic minorities who don’t want to remain within the boundaries of the ultra-nationalistic successor entities that emerged from the old Soviet Union. Many would rather become sovereign themselves.

Admittedly, none of this applies to minorities within the Russian Federation --as the Chechens and even the Tatars well know. This is of course hypocrisy on Moscow’s part, and no one should defend it, even if it is based on fears of Islamist penetration into Russia.

Abkhazia today defines itself as a nation state in the “strong” sense, that is, as the state of and for a particular nation. In order to preserve that status language and education laws were passed to protect the primacy of its language.

The authorities in Sukhumi have put the ethnic Abkhaz at the centre of their nation-building project.

A 2007 law defines Abkhaz as the only state language and declares that “all citizens of the Republic of Abkhazia must have command of the state language.” These laws are component parts of an effort for Abkhaz cultural and linguistic revival.

In fact in Soviet times, the Abkhaz had become a minority in their own land. This is no longer the case, of course – Russians moved away, and Georgians fled. The 1992–1993 war led to the ethnic cleansing of the more than 200,000 Georgians by then living in the region. Today Abkhazia’s 243,000 people are mostly Abkhaz.

The Ossetians were arbitrarily divided into North and South Ossetia within the Soviet Union. The north was part of, and remains, within Russia proper, while the south became an autonomous region of Georgia.

South Ossetia’s population of 53,000 is also ethnically homogenous, as most Georgians, who had comprised some 30 per cent of the population, left the region after 1992.

In South Ossetia, while Ossetian is the state language, Russian remains an official language. However, Moscow is committed to helping the authorities in Tskhinvali in their development of the Ossetian language and culture.

In 2014-Russia concluded treaties of alliance with both polities. Moscow has used its strengthening ties to them to deter Georgia’s efforts to develop effective relationships with external actors, particularly with the United States and NATO.