Ex-de facto president of Abkhazia: we hope for recognition from Belarus
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, March 5
The former de-facto prime minister of occupied Abkhazia Sergey Shamba hopes that “someday, Belarus will recognize the independence of Abkhazia,” the eastern, currently Russian-occupied region of Georgia.
"Abkhazia has always had a good relationship with Belarus. We hope that someday Belarus will recognition us. We will wait for this moment, “Shamba said.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has said that he refused to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) in order to avoid possible international isolation of Belarus.
“Belarus does not have any political or economic problems with Georgia and we are ready to use our good relations to develop good relations between Russia and Georgia, which, by the way, is what we are doing,” Lukashenko has stated at the meeting held in Minsk.
To the question of the Georgian Public Broadcaster about how relations between the two countries are developing and what is expected in the future, Lukashenko answered that Belarus and Georgia started economic relations from scratch, and now the trade amounts to tens of millions.
“We are a friendly state for you and we have excellent relations. We did not have a turnover with Georgia and now this figure is 87 million. The country is small, the market is small, but we started our cooperation from scratch. You need everything we produce. I was in Georgia, I saw how the country is developing, and I saw that the demand for our products is huge,” Lukashenko said.
Only Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru and Syria have recognised the so-called independence of the two Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali.
The rest of the international community says that the regions are occupied by Russia.
