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On February 5, 2025, a Roundtable on the topic “Early Presidential Elections in Abkhazia: Dynamics of the Development of the Situation” was held at the Institute of CIS countries. The event was attended by Alexander Krylov, Chief Researcher of the Sector for the Caucasus of the Center for post-Soviet Studies of IMEMO, Dr. of Science (History), where he spoke about the upcoming elections in Abkhazia in the context of the prospects of relations with Russia.

The expert noted national peculiarities of the Abkhazian mentality, based on which Abkhazians are masters of the land, that they received from the Creator God himself, and all others are later guests. He emphasized that the pre-election struggle in Abkhazia is presented in the information field as a confrontation between pro-Russian (Badra Gunba) and pro-Turkish (Adgur Ardzinba) political forces. Other candidates are presented as secondary in relation to the two main candidates.

According to Alexander Krylov, today in Abkhazia there is a struggle not of ideas, but of compromises. As a characteristic of the background against which electoral processes are taking place, the expert noted the presence of a number of long-standing problems within the Republic. These include lack of modernization, visible qualitative changes in the economy of the country and preservation of post-war devastation in the system of worn-out public utilities, acute demographic problem, the issue of preservation and development of the Abkhazian language, an endless series of revisions of international (in particular, Russian-Abkhazian) agreements, which every time have to be renewed after a change of power in the country, which reduces their effectiveness, preservation of cronyism in many spheres of life of the Republic, energy problems (in the presence of mining farms). He believes that these are the issues that are fundamentally important for the Republic, but they are absent from the agenda of most candidates.

Alexander Krylov noted that for the development of Abkhazia and fruitful cooperation between Russia and Abkhazia, the Republic needs a responsible leader who will enjoy the trust of the people and unite around him constructive forces of the country. For this purpose, the elections should be organized and conducted in such a way that their result do not raise any doubts about their authenticity.

The event was attended by Vladimir Novikov, Head of the Caucasus Department of the Institute of CIS Countries, Valentina Komleva, Deputy Director for Research of the National Research Institute for Development of Communications, Andrei Areshev, expert of the Strategic Culture Foundation, and Natella Starodubtseva, Lead Researcher of the Caucasus Department of the Institute of CIS Countries.