By Kontur and AFP | 2024-02-09

TBILISI -- Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has denounced a reported Russian plan to set up a navy base in the breakaway Abkhazia region as a threat to security in the Black Sea.

Last October, as Ukraine stepped up attacks on Moscow's Black Sea Fleet, Abkhaz separatist leader Aslan Bzhania said he had signed an agreement with Russia to establish a Russian naval base at the Black Sea town of Ochamchire "in the near future."

"Russia's plan to transform the Ochamchire port into its navy base is aimed at shifting the confrontation into the Black Sea, into our territorial waters and at creating a threat to the strategic perspective of the Black Sea," Zourabichvili said during an address to parliament on February 6.

Zourabichvili also warned Russia had "begun fresh attacks in its hybrid war on Georgia."

Her role in government is largely ceremonial, though she has been a staunch backer of Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.

Russia already has permanent military bases in Abkhazia and in another Moscow-backed separatist region, South Ossetia -- both of which it recognised as independent states in the wake of its war with the Caucasus country in 2008.

Ochamchire, a seaside town close to the Georgian resort town of Anaklia on the Black Sea, has been a base for Russian patrol vessels operating in the Black Sea since 2009.

The Ochamchire port

The port near the town of Ochamchire was built in the 1930s and housed Soviet submarines during World War II.

After the Soviet Union's collapse, the Ochamchire base played no role except to periodically support separatists in their fight against the Georgian military in 1992-1993.

In 2009, the Russian General Staff announced the Black Sea Fleet's return to Ochamchire, but only small vessels -- the Federal Security Service (FSB)'s coast guard boats -- returned.

Ochamchire is presently the home port for up to seven patrol boats of the Project Sobol and Project Mangust classes, according to available data.

In 2016, a Turkish company that was illegally exporting Tkvarcheli coal from the port's northern wharf deepened the seabed to 9 meters in and around the port. This depth allows the wharf to receive much larger vessels.

"Ochamchire Bay is suitable for accommodating warships, but first of all it is necessary for creating an early warning system, deploying air defense and coastal defense systems covering Novorossiysk," Alexander Artamonov, a Russian military observer, told Russian news agency Regnum in October.

"The Black Sea Fleet has a little over 60,000 in total ship tonnage. The Turkish navy has 80,000 in tonnage. We also have Lada- and Varshavyanka-class submarines in the Black Sea. So the base in Abkhazia will enable maximum use of the fleet's capabilities," said Artamonov.

Still, Ochamchire port is too shallow to receive major ships and transforming it into a significant naval base would require massive renovation of its obsolete infrastructure.

Strengthening positions against NATO

The planned base is significant as a forward position against NATO, which no longer is represented only by Türkiye in the Black Sea, according to retired Russian naval Capt. 1st Class Vasily Dandykin, a military analyst.

"The presence of such a base will require additional deployment of anti-aircraft weapons, these same S-400 air defense systems, and Bal and Bastion coastal defense systems," he told Regnum.

"That is, we will strengthen the line of defense on this flank as much as possible."

Ukraine's defense intelligence service said in October that Russia was actively "reconstructing the [Ochamchire] port infrastructure in some places to ensure that warships can be based there."

Despite its stalled counter-offensive on land, Ukraine has had more success fighting Moscow in the Black Sea, sinking several Russian warships and opening an export corridor for commercial ships along its southern coast.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the Russian navy "is no longer capable of operating in the western part of the Black Sea and is gradually retreating from Crimea."

Ukraine last year struck the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea fleet on the annexed Crimean peninsula in a missile attack, marking a major blow to Moscow.