By Lidia Kelly
(Reuters) -The leader of the Moscow-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia resigned on Tuesday after a deal allowing for the expansion of Russian business in the republic led to mass protests and the opposition seizing government buildings.
“In order to maintain stability and constitutional order in the country … I resign from my post,” Bzhania said after hours of negotiations with the opposition in a signed document posted on the Telegram messaging channel of his press office.
Bzhania had faced weeks of growing tensions, with the opposition demanding his resignation, calling for new elections and seizing buildings and bridges in protests against an agreement that would open the property market of the Black Sea region to wealthy Russians.
Bzhania’s condition for resignation was that the protesters leave the parliament building in the republic’s capital of Sukhumi. The parliament was supposed to ratify the investment deal on Friday, but postponed the move due to the protests.
While Moscow has refrained from intervening, calling for a speedy normalisation of the situation, the Abkhazia crisis poses another challenge for President Vladimir Putin, whose country has been waging a war against Ukraine for 1,000 days now.
The 61-yeard-old Bzhania, a former chief of the state security service who became head of state in 2020, is the third Abkhazian leader to be toppled in a similar way since 2008.
Abkhazia, at the intersection of Eastern Europe and West Asia, with its costal lowland and mountain spurs, was in Soviet times one of the key holiday destinations for Moscow’s elite.
Protesters said they were not against Abkhazia’s close ties with Moscow, but accused Bzhania of trying to use these relations for his own purpose and to strengthen his regime.
Russia recognised Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia, as independent states in 2008 after it defeated Georgia in a five-day war. It maintains troop bases in both regions and props up their economies.
Most of the world recognises Abkhazia as part of Georgia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Tbilisi’s rule during wars in the 1990s that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Citing a speaker of the region’s parliament, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported there will be an early election called, without providing further details.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Ron Popeski in Winnipeg; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Stephen Coates)
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