Belarusian President Lukashenko visits breakaway republic of Abkhazia

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko during his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Sochi on September 26, 2022. AP - Gavriil Grigorov

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

This Wednesday afternoon, Alexander Lukashenko was visiting Abkhazia, a breakaway republic from Georgia.

An event, as the Belarusian president has resisted pressure from Moscow for years to recognize this entity which separated from Georgia in 1993, at the end of a war which had left 10,000 dead.

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With our correspondent in Tbilisi,

It has been at least a dozen years that Alexander Lukashenko has been asked by the Kremlin, when it is not a question of threats, so that Belarus recognizes Abkhazia.

But the subject of territorial integrity is too sensitive in the former Soviet space for him to give in to pressure, especially since the dictator of Minsk is a master in the art of cheating Moscow.

But his surprise visit this Wednesday to Sukhumi, the Abkhazian capital, is a first.

As such, it is considered in the former USSR as an important sign that the lines are moving in the region.

Everyone notices that it comes the day after

to annex four regions of eastern and southern Ukraine.

The Kremlin has been orchestrating major geopolitical maneuvers in recent weeks, on the sidelines of the war.

At the end of August, Aslan Bzhania, the leader of the separatist entity, was invited to Moscow to hear that it would be good to join the Union of Russia and Belarus, created in 1997. One of these organizations invented by Moscow to perpetuate the defunct Soviet Union. 

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• Belarus

• Alexander Lukashenko

• Russia

• Georgia