President Dmitry Medvedev and his Abkhazian counterpart Sergey Bagapsh have signed ten bilateral deals, including an agreement to establish a military base in Abkhazia.
“We have an agreement with Abkhazia on military cooperation. Today we signed an agreement on a joint Russian-Abkhazian military base in Abkhazia,” he said.
Earlier, Itar-Tass news agency, citing a source at the Russian armed forces, wrote the base will be set up in order to “protect the sovereignty and security of the [Abkhazian] republic, as well as counteracting international terrorism.” The document will be valid for 49 years, to be later automatically extended for 15 more years.
Medvedev said that the two states will work intensively “to make the cooperation between our two states very concrete and target-oriented.”
“We have a number of promising areas for cooperation and we have just signed documents on some of those,” Medvedev said. Those areas include transport infrastructure, since the “economy cannot develop without that,” he noted.
Another agreement has to do with Russian-Abkhazian cooperation in preventing emergencies, the Russian president said, adding that “we do not want any emergencies, but this is life.”
Summarizing, Medvedev said all the documents signed “correspond to our concept of the development of relations with Abkhazia and to our international commitments”. Most importantly, he went on, the deals are “a foundation for the peaceful development of Abkhazia as an independent state.”
Dmitry Babich, political analyst from RIA Novosti news agency, discussed the importance of the joint military base.
“It’s mostly important for Abkhazia, because it’s a guarantee that Abkhazia won’t be attacked again by Georgia,” Babich stressed. “This may be a sad day for ethnic Georgians, who had to flee Abkhazia more than 15 years ago. But I hope that now that the situation is stabilized, probably these people will have a better chance to return than before.”
Political analyst Irina Kobrinskaya from the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations explains Russian-Abkhazian relations:
“There are no doubts on both sides about the very strong dependence of Abkhazia on Russia,” she said, adding, “It was clear from the very start, from the time of the conflict and from the moment when Abkhazia declared its independence and was recognized by Russia. Today’s signing of the documents in different spheres just institutionalized the new relations.”
RT
