The head of the Center for Political Research at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Boris Shmelev, considers the refusal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Abkhazia to sign a cooperation agreement with the Russian National Guard as a bad symptom.

“Abkhazia owes its existence to Russia financially and also ensures its security. However, difficult relations have developed in recent years between Abkhazia and Russia. In Abkhazia there is a clan system of power that is busy with its own affairs. And these clans are not all oriented, unfortunately, towards Russia. Some of them are focused on solving their problems with the help of Turkey – an external factor. And such a demarche associated with the Russian Guard precisely reflects the desire of Abkhazia, of part of these clans, to ensure, as it were, such quasi-independence of Abkhazia, to show its independence, a manifestation of local nationalism that will not lead Abkhazia to anything good,” the political scientist comments on the situation in an interview with Pravda. Ru.

Against the background of generally favorable development of relations between Russia and Abkhazia, there are also problems, the expert believes.

“One of the big problems that is developing in our relations is the problem of property in Abkhazia. Russia would be interested in Russian business buying out a large number of recreational facilities there that were still built during the Soviet Union, modernizing them so that Russian tourists would be there could rest. But Abkhazia, the Abkhaz leadership, the Abkhaz public are categorically against this. This is an interesting moment, since the Abkhazians themselves are not able to do anything, but they do not allow Russia to do this either. And there are many such moments here that indicate that that there are many rough edges in our relations that require attention from Moscow and the adoption of more energetic measures to stabilize relations between Abkhazia and Russia,” Boris Shmelev assesses the current situation.

The political scientist believes that the incident will not have a negative impact on future relations between Russia and Abkhazia.

“This is not such an event, not such a fact that there will be fundamental changes in our relations here. This is a good reason to take more seriously all the processes that are taking place there, to track those political forces that are striving for power in Abkhazia. Abkhazia is a very difficult education. And here we need to monitor what is happening there and decisively intervene in these processes in order to prevent the situation from getting out of control,” said the interlocutor of our publication.