abkhazia

“Water has no border” - a 2021 documentary by Maradia Tsaava. See trailer and synopsis. Seen at the Trento Film Festival in May 2022. Crossing the de facto border (also known as administrative boundary line) between Abkhazia and Samegrelo is not so easy - unless you are water, or you work with water: employees working on the hydroelectric powerplant cross the border routinely. “The other side” is just a few hundreds meters away at most throughout the film, and yet, seemingly unreachable for the film’s protagonist (Maradia) and her crew.

Italian maritime republics such as Venice and Genoa were very active in the Black Sea between the 13th and 15th century. Their presence in Abkhazia and their involvement in the slave trade from the Western Caucasus are the main subjects of a recently published book

Is being famous nationally an asset or a liability for candidates competing in a single-constituency electoral system in a small polity? Judging from the recent elections in Abkhazia, certainly not a big asset, and probably a liability, in particular in the second round. In this post, “being famous” is operationalised as “number of mentions of given candidate” in Abkhazia’s main news agency. Relevant data are presented in a few graphs below.

ICG’s latest report on Abkhazia is timely and its recommendations show the way forward. As usual, it provides a wealth of information and details. Yet, it is not without imprecisions

The law “On the state language”, approved by the authorities in Sukhumi in 2007, risks exacerbating inter-ethnic relations in Abkhazia, a territory that remains largely multi-ethnic, even after the ethnic cleansing that happened during the war. Our correspondent went to Abkhazia to find out more about it. A feature story