The Russian media seems to have arranged a "conspiracy of silence" around the Abkhazian opposition's organized rallies against the sale of Abkhazia on 30 May 2023. This is logical: the Kremlin regime is trying its best to maintain the illusion of "resort well-being" in at least one of the seized foreign regions. Especially against the background of the failed and disastrous Ukrainian war, when the front line is already approaching the occupied Ukrainian Crimea, when the Russian border regions (Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk) are already on fire and combat drones are reaching Moscow.

However, even if in the current holiday season military attacks on the occupied Abkhazia and Russian occupation troops stationed there can be avoided, then nothing good can come from this temporary "calm" in the current geopolitical situation for numerically small Abkhazian people. Abkhazia is rapidly being settled by newcomers. A video has already appeared on social networks in which a Russian woman boasts of having received a "residence permit in the separatist Abkhazia:

It is obvious from her appearance that she is Russian and she does not hide the fact that she received a separatist document. However, far more people receive such separatist residence permits from representatives of quite a different nationality. And which one - one can guess.

Much more rights than the residence permit gives citizenship of the separatist Abkhazia. And recently a scandal erupted when it emerged that over three years more than 3 thousand Armenian settlers - more than representatives of other nationalities - received separatist passports of "citizens of Abkhazia". According to official data out of 6693 Abkhazian separatist passports issued during the period from 2020 to 2022 Armenians received 3 061 documents. It must be stressed that these were Armenians who had nothing to do with Abkhazia and among them were migrants from Azerbaijan's Karabakh and the Republic of Armenia.

But one can be settled in the separatist Abkhazia with a separatist "residence permit". It is quite easy to obtain this "residence permit" if one finds a "common language" with the separatist "Ministry of Internal Affairs", which is corrupt to the extreme (in simple terms, for a bribe, which is much smaller than for obtaining "citizenship").

Residence permits in separatist Abkhazia are issued by the "Passport Department of the Ministry of Interior" and are issued for five years. When the residence permit expires, this period may be extended for another five years at the request of the residence permit holder. There is no limit to the number of extensions.

The fact that there are many more residence permits issued in separatist Abkhazia than there are separatist passports of "citizens of Abkhazia" everyone is used to. After all, by the idea these documents should be issued to absolutely powerless Georgians of the Gali district who have had all the separatist passports cancelled.

But in practice, it is very difficult for Georgians to obtain such documents with a "residence permit". Recently, in Gali their issuance was generally suspended for several months in the separatist "Interior Ministry" explaining that their allegedly "broken printer".

Most Georgians in the Gali district have no separatist documents and after years of striving to get them they are still completely powerless. Of course, forms of "residence permits" are not missing. As can be seen from the above video, printers are working properly and stamping separatist "residence permits" for everyone in Abkhazia, except Georgians in those very places of Gagra and Sukhumi. For a certain "fee", of course.

There is no doubt that most of the recipients of the residence permits in separatist Abkhazia are ethnic Armenians, who thus legalized their settlement in Abkhazia. In the near future there will be many more of them due to the mass influx of "Artsakh" separatists from Azerbaijan's Karabakh. After Azerbaijan set up a checkpoint on the Lachin road, the Armenian "Artsakh" separatists are preparing to resettle en masse along the "Karabakh-Republic of Armenia-Russia-Occupied Abkhazia" route.

To accommodate the mass resettlement of Karabakh Armenians in separatist Abkhazia, the proxy authorities have already prepared a draft law "On regulating the legal status of apartment hotels and apartments". According to it, "apartments" (in fact, ordinary flats and houses, often "trophy" housing legally owned by Georgian refugees) will be considered not as residential but as commercial real estate. And, accordingly, will be subject to sale to "not citizens" of separatist Abkhazia.

In other words, having a "residence permit" and having bought an apartment Armenian immigrants will be able to live quietly in Abkhazia, enjoying more rights and opportunities than those harassed and discriminated against indigenous inhabitants - Georgians from Gali. And to solve "political issues" the Armenian lobby has Armenians with separatist citizenship who, in fact, already outnumber Abkhazians.

Aleksandre Gedevanov