Russia is planning to build a naval base in Abkhazia, one of two breakaway regions of Georgia occupied in 2008 by Russian forces. According to satellite images published by the BBC, seabed dredging activities and the construction of the first facilities are underway in the port of Ochamchire. If the new Russian base were built, Georgia would become an important rear for the Black Sea fleet, finding itself involved against its will in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
According to the Institute for the Studies of the War (ISW), Ukrainian attacks on Russian ships in the port of Sevastopol have forced Moscow to change the operational models of the navy, moving the largest ships to the easternmost coast of the Black Sea which had as their main base the large port of Crimea. This has reduced Russia's ability to threaten Ukrainian maritime trade in the western Black Sea, which is bordered by ports in the Odessa region. The ISW believes that Russia is reorganizing its operations by basing itself on the Russian port of Novorossiysk and the port of Ochamchire.
The announcement of the construction of a Russian military base in the occupied territory dates back to October 5, when the leader of Abkhazia, Aslan Bzhania, after a meeting with Vladimir Putin said that he had signed an agreement to build a permanent Russian naval base in the region separatist. “All of this is aimed at increasing the defense capability of both Russia and Abkhazia, and this type of interaction will continue,” Bzhania said, Reuters reported. He also said: "There are also other things, but I cannot talk about them," but Mosca refused to comment on that statement.
The news went almost unnoticed until the BCC published satellite images showing the progress of the construction of the military base in the port of Ochamchire which, according to experts, will allow the docking of ships of up to thirteen thousand tons. This not only worries Georgians, who risk being involved in the war in Ukraine, but threatens to ruin Tbilisi's plans to build a large infrastructure on the Black Sea coast, too close to the new Russian naval base.
In fact, Ochamchire is not far from Anaklia, the Georgian city closest to Abkhazia, where Georgia also plans to build a deep-water port to increase its projection in the Black Sea, allowing the candidate country to join the European Union to be part of a trans-Caucasian trade corridor linking East and West through Central Asia and the South Caucasus, bypassing Russia.
The port of Anaklia – is considered vital for boosting trade along the so-called Middle Corridor, the fastest route for transporting goods from China to European ports on the Black Sea. The World Bank has estimated that the corridor could halve travel times and triple commercial volumes by 2030.
Moscow opposes the expansion of the port of Anaklia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that US Navy submarines could dock there. The development of the Anaklia project has stalled for now, also due to the internal conflict of the Georgian economic powers, but Tbilisi insists on the relaunch, ensuring that the winners of the contract will be announced shortly.
The ruling “Georgian Dream” party, accused of being pro-Russian, downplays the significance of the Kremlin's plans for Abkhazia. Nikoloz Samkharadze, head of Georgia's Foreign Relations Committee, told the BBC that building the Ochamchire naval base will take at least three years, while the government is focused "on imminent threats and not on those that may come in the future." . As if the Russian occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were not a current threat to Tbilisi.
