Election of the weekend II: Abkhazia

The Georgian SSR declared their independence from Moscow in April of 1991; by the end of that year they’d suffered a coup d’etat and descended into civil war. Abkhazia, along with South Ossetia, were a major part of that war, as separatists in both regions sought freedom from Georgian rule, The result was a frozen conflict and breakaway republic which has persisted for over 3 decades. The war largely displaced (in some cases killed) the local Georgian population; the remaining population of a quarter million people is predominantly Abkhaz with some Russians and Armenians.

This is round 2 of their presidential election; the first round was two weeks ago but did not produce a majority victor. The election was called due to the resignation of Aslan Bzhania, who resigned in November 2024 due to mass protests against his regime. (The protests were triggered in part by a law that would make it easier for Russian nationals to purchase property in Abkhazia.) Badra Gunba took over the presidency and is the leading candidate for this one, winning the first round 47-38. He is Moscow’s preferred candidate. His opponent is Adgur Ardzinba, who served as Ministry of the Economy from 2015-2020. A major focus on his tenure was a shift to cryptocurrency, including some scheme for Abkhazia to launch its own, as an effort to get around the challenges of attracting international investment that bedevil unrecognized state-like entities. Rampant crypto-mining threatened to break Abhkazia’s energy grid in 2018-19.

Here’s a report from the first round election.

A presidential election held on Sunday in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia produced no clear winner, setting up a second round between the top two candidates, state news agency Apsnypress said.

Citing Abkhazia’s electoral commission, the agency reported that acting President Badra Gunba had taken 46% of the vote, while opposition leader Adgur Ardzinba won almost 37%.

Gunba, who was previously vice president, took over as Abkhazia’s leader in November after his predecessor was driven from office by protests against an investment agreement with Russia.

It was the third time since 2014 that an Abkhazian leader had been driven from office by mass protests.

Though the territory is politically and economically dependent on Russia, some Abkhazians have been critical of what they see as Moscow’s growing influence in the breakaway state.

Later on Monday, the Russian Investigative Committee, the federal authority responsible for investigating major crimes, said it had opened an investigation into what it called “threats and violations of the rights of Russian citizens in Abkhazia”.

“A number of media outlets reported that individuals acting in the interests of one of the Abkhazian presidential candidates demanded that residents, including those with Russian citizenship, support specific political forces,” the committee said.

This is a troubled regime in a troubled region, but in that context, it’s at least somewhat heartening to learn that some non-trivial portion of the citizenry are opposed to and willing to publicly stand up to Russian dominance, although given their precarious situation, it’s not clear such a stand, however righteous, is particularly practical.

The polls closed around 90 minutes ago. I’m not seeing any results reported yet, though. Ardzinba has accused Gunba of colluding with Russia to rig the election, and apparently there was some sort of attack on a polling station in the closing minutes of the election that may have damaged or destroyed some ballots.