MOSCOW, January 22. /TASS/. Russia’s State Duma plans to ratify a treaty of alliance and strategic partnership with Abkhazia on January 23, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Sergey Naryshkin, told the media after a meeting of the State Duma’s Council on Thursday.
“The ratification of the treaty of alliance and strategic partnership with Abkhazia is on the agenda of tomorrow’s session,” he said.
Naryshkin believes that “the treaty will take relations between Abkhazia and Russia to a qualitatively new level.”
The treaty’s main feature is creation of a common space of defense and security.
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Also, as Naryshkin said, “the treaty will create conditions for Abkhazia’s more active involvement in international economic cooperation with Russia.”
The chairman of the State Duma’s CIS affairs, Eurasian integration and diaspora relations committee, Leonid Slutsky, explained that the treaty would in the first place systematize the legal framework of inter-state relations, already based on nearly 80 bilateral agreements.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Abkhazia’s leader Raul Khadjimba concluded the treaty in Sochi on November 24, 2014. It envisages creation of a common space of defense and security, including a common group of the Russian and Abkhazian armed forces.
“Should either side be attacked by some other state or a group of states, this will be regarded as an act of aggression against the other side,” the treaty says. Russia and Abkhazia will be jointly guarding the Georgian-Abkhazian border and also sea areas to which the sovereignty of the Republic of Abkhazia applies.