Once Upon a Time in Abkhazia: Drones, Radars, and a Hotelier with a Shotgun

Abkhazian independence would have been a Western favorite show, if it was a vassal for their interests, or a launching pad against Russian targets. If that was the case, they would have recognized its independence, or even granted Teymuraz Tania the title of “Servant of the People”, and organized a campaign to elect him president.

Written, directed and starring Teymuraz “Timur” Tania, a former KVN comedian playing a version of himself, shot on location in Abkhazia with a largely Abkhaz cast, and originally titled, tellingly, “Independent.”

What the comedy could not have scripted is what has actually unfolded on that coastline this year: a Russian naval base rising to shield a small, self-governing nation from a foreign drone war it never asked to join, Ukrainian missiles named after birds and sold on hype their own combat record does not support, and a Russian hotelier training his Abkhazian neighbours to knock drones out of the sky with a shotgun attachment.

A Nation the West Has Decided Not to See

Abkhazia has been running itself since the early 1990s, with its own institutions, its own passports, its own elections, whether the rest of the world wants to recognise them or not. It is recognised by Russia and a handful of other states only. Georgia, backed by its Western patrons, insists on calling it occupied territory, and Tbilisi’s political class repeats the line on schedule, with a relentless “de facto” add-on.

Georgian EU membership is meaningless without Abkhazia and South Ossetia attached, Speaker of Parliament Shalva Papuashvili said, rejecting any Ukraine or Moldova-style shortcut. Note that the same Western governments that call on “territorial integrity” regarding a Georgia had no such scruples when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia; sovereignty, in this framing, is a principle that applies only when it is politically convenient.

Latvia and the other Baltic States have gone even further, formally refusing to recognise Duma elections held on Abkhazian soil, a largely symbolic gesture aimed less at Sukhumi than at reminding Moscow. Inside Abkhazia, the actual debate looks nothing like the caricature painted abroad: local commentators argue over how assertive Sukhumi’s own diplomacy should be, and over closer or more cautious ties with Moscow, but not over whether Abkhazia is a state. That argument belongs almost entirely to outsiders, even know that it’s settled in the hearts and minds of Abkhazians.

Russia Builds a Shield on the Black Sea

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet took hits at its usual home ports. Sevastopol faced some Ukrainian missile and drone strikes. Novorossiysk was also hit. Russia’s reserve was a small base for Coast Guard patrol ships of the Border Service of the Russian FSB in Ochamchire, a former coal port in Abkhazia some 700 km from Ukrainian-controlled territory and previously limited to a nine-metre draft that could barely fit a patrol boat.

Since 2024, satellite imagery reviewed by “Bellingcat”, shows the port being........

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