Russia to set up permanent naval base in breakaway Georgian region

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Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia has signed a deal with Moscow to establish a permanent naval base on the region’s Black Sea coast, its leader said, as Russia shifts its vessels in the area following Ukrainian missile attacks.

Aslan Bzhania, Abkhazia’s leader, told the Russian newspaper Izvestiya on Thursday that the region had signed an agreement with Moscow “and in the future there will be a permanent base for the Russian navy fleet in the Ochamchira district”.

The Kremlin declined to confirm the claim, which came a day after Bzhania met Russian president Vladimir Putin, and follows the transfer of several Russian vessels away from occupied Crimea in Ukraine, according to satellite images.

The Washington DC-based Institute for the Study of War, citing satellite imagery, said on Tuesday that the Russia military “recently transferred several Black Sea Fleet vessels from the port in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea to the port in Novorossiysk . . . likely in an effort to protect them from continued Ukrainian strikes on Russian assets in occupied Crimea”.

Russia’s Black Sea fleet has come under repeated fire in recent weeks from Ukrainian forces, including with UK and French-supplied long-range missiles and with aerial and sea drones.

Russia, which recognised the independence of Abkhazia after a brief war with Georgia in 2008, has been in discussions with the breakaway region about setting up a naval base in its coastal city of Ochamchira since 2009. It opened a coastguard station there in 2017, according to local media.

Andriy Yusov, an officer in Ukraine’s military intelligence services, told the Financial Times that Russia’s navy has partially retreated from Sevastopol, but declined to reveal details.

“There is a process under way . . . they are taking measures to partially transfer the fleet and infrastructure, but not completely,” Yusov said. “A portion of their military vessels remain there and near Crimea, but they started this process after a series of strikes.”

The Ukrainian long-range strikes are an attempt to prevent Russia from further using Crimea, which it occupied in 2014, as a southern staging ground for its full-scale invasion and naval blockade of Ukrainian ports, which Kyiv uses for grain exports.

Recent Ukrainian strikes have hit the Black Sea fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol, and destroyed an amphibious navy vessel and submarine based there. Those strikes were preceded by Ukrainian attacks on Russian air defence systems and air bases on the peninsula.

Yusov said the strikes on “military infrastructure on the peninsula will continue to increase because Crimea is actively used by the enemy as a logistical hub to project its forces and means on other occupied territories”.

Russian naval vessels patrolling the Black Sea have also been targeted by Ukrainian sea drones, keeping them away from a shipping corridor Ukraine unilaterally launched this summer, which hugs the coast of its Odesa region and southern neighbours Romania and Bulgaria, both members of the Nato military alliance.

The attempt by Kyiv to reboot maritime exports of grain and metal products follows Russia’s withdrawal in July from a UN-backed grain agreement allowing safe passage of cargo carrying food from Ukraine to global markets.

Oleksander Kubrakov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said this week that 10 commercial vessels have so far used the corridor and more are heading to Ukrainian ports to pick up cargo.