The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Abkhazia got acquainted with an interview of James Gilmore, the US Ambassador to the OSCE in which he allowed himself a number of unacceptable statements to the Republic of Abkhazia accompanying them with the peculiar historical excursions.
The content and general tone of the interview is extremely depressing. The banal propaganda material with a standard set of phrases and definitions is before us. It is impossible to find an adequate analysis of the situation or even any objective conclusions in any place of this text with all desire. The main content of the material is made up of extremely unilateral assessments of events in Ukraine and the South Caucasus, the desire to make Russia an "occupier", and Abkhazia and South Ossetia - "occupied territories", etc. At the same time, the motives for the actions of the United States itself, as Gilmore points out, are invariably high - for Washington, it turns out, it is important that all countries feel the security of their borders and for the residents of the South Caucasus, the United States simply wants a better life.
The US Ambassador clearly contradicts himself when he states that he knows Georgia and its history well touching upon the situation in the South Caucasus. We can draw the exact opposite conclusion based on the statements of D. Gilmore. We can also assume that he knows only the version of the story that he got acquainted with in Tbilisi. This is the only way to explain the reasoning of the US ambassador that “South Ossetia and Abkhazia were part of Georgia until the Russian army invaded, which took control of the situation. ". D. Gilmore, obviously, is not aware that the movement for independence from Georgia gained momentum in Abkhazia even in the Soviet era, that it was based on the desire of the Abkhazians to self-preservation before the prospect of absorption by the independent Georgia. The extremely negative historical experience of coexistence with Georgia in many respects gave the rise to the desire of Abkhaz to self-determination and the construction of the independent statehood. Meanwhile, Abkhazia is not an independent political entity and is just a puppet in the hands of external forces for D. Gilmore as well as for some other representatives of Western countries.
Such an approach is very convenient, since it allows Georgia and its Western partners to ignore the fact of the Republic of Abkhazia and indiscriminately blame Russia for all its problems.
D. Gilmore’s conviction that in the 1990s the Georgian authorities “did not want to show hostility to Abkhazia” looks extremely naive and clearly contradicts the facts that are widely known both in Abkhazia and abroad.
It should be recalled that they are deployed in the Republic of Abkhazia in accordance with the bilateral agreements between the authorities of Abkhazia and Russia as for the deployment of Russian troops in Abkhazia, which is so worrying for the US ambassador to the OSCE. The Russian troops are the most important factor in ensuring of the security of the Republic of Abkhazia and do not pose any threat to Georgia.
The statements of James Gilmore only confirm the Washington’s confrontational attitude towards sovereign Abkhazia. The double standards applied by the United States also make themselves felt - recognizing that Georgia is an independent state with a future, the American diplomat denies the Republic of Abkhazia the same right.
The Abkhaz side has repeatedly drawn attention to the futility of such approaches and the inadmissibility of offensive rhetoric, including from the US officials.