The Georgian–Abkhaz conflict cannot be understood through Russian–Georgian rivalry alone; its roots lie in a much older dispute over history, sovereignty and political legitimacy.

There is a persistent habit in international discussions of Abkhazia: begin with Russia.

Once that happens, the rest of the story almost writes itself. Abkhazia becomes a Russian instrument, Georgia becomes the victim of Russian expansion, and the Georgian–Abkhaz conflict is reduced to another chapter in the long confrontation between Moscow and Tbilisi.

The problem is not simply that this account is incomplete.

It begins the story in the wrong place.

The Georgian–Abkhaz conflict did not emerge from the deterioration of Russian–Georgian relations. Its central disputes were already deeply rooted before the Soviet Union collapsed, before Georgia became an independent state, and before the Russian Federation existed in its present form.

The conflict developed around a much more fundamental question: what was Abkhazia’s political relationship with Georgia, and who had the right to determine it?

That question has been disputed for generations.

For Georgians, Abkhazia increasingly came to be understood as an inseparable part of the Georgian political space. For the Abkhaz, the relationship was experienced very differently: through changing constitutional arrangements, demographic transformation, policies affecting language and education, and repeated struggles over political status.

These were not disputes invented in Moscow after 1991.

They were already there.

The history does not begin in 2008, or even in 1992

This is where chronology becomes important.

The late Stephen Shenfield’s study of the conflict does not begin with Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin or even the Soviet collapse. It traces the relationship through the pre-Russian period, the nineteenth century, the Georgian Democratic Republic, early Soviet Abkhazia, the Stalin–Beria years, the post-Stalin period and finally the crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

That longer history matters.

During the Soviet period, tensions repeatedly surfaced over Abkhazia’s status, language, education, demographic change and political representation. Abkhaz protests took place in 1957, the 1960s and 1978. By 1989, relations had deteriorated into open confrontation.

All of this happened before Russia and Georgia became rival independent states.

The Lykhny gathering of March 1989, the dispute surrounding the proposed Tbilisi State University branch in Sukhum, and the deadly clashes of July belonged to an already developing Georgian–Abkhaz confrontation.

So when the conflict is presented primarily as something Moscow engineered against independent Georgia, a basic question arises:

How can Russian–Georgian rivalry explain a conflict whose central grievances were already producing political mobilisation and violence before that rivalry existed in its post-Soviet form?

It cannot.

Russia’s role was never as simple as the modern narrative suggests

Nor does the history of the 1992–93 war fit comfortably into a simple picture of Russia directing an Abkhaz campaign against Georgia.

Russian policy was inconsistent, contested and often contradictory.

As Izida Chania has pointed out, Russian military assets were transferred to Georgia as the Soviet military structure was being dismantled. In June 1992, Yeltsin and Shevardnadze met at Dagomys, only weeks before Georgian forces entered Abkhazia. During the war, Moscow repeatedly mediated agreements and pressured the Abkhaz leadership, while the Russian authorities later participated in imposing severe restrictions on Abkhazia.

After the war, Russia joined the CIS blockade of Abkhazia and kept its border heavily restricted. Moscow continued formally to support Georgia’s territorial integrity for years. Russia did not recognise Abkhazia until August 2008.

None of this means that Russian forces or Russian political actors had no involvement in the conflict. They did, and Russian institutions themselves were far from unified.

But that is precisely the point.

The historical record is considerably messier than the idea of a single Russian hand controlling events from beginning to end.

Russia pursued Russian interests.

Those interests changed.

And they did not always coincide with Abkhaz interests.

The Abkhaz cannot simply be written out of their own conflict

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the Russia-centred explanation is that it leaves remarkably little room for the Abkhaz themselves.

The argument often works like this: Russia wanted leverage over Georgia; therefore it supported Abkhazia; therefore Abkhaz separatism was essentially an instrument of Russian policy.

But the logic skips the most important part.

Why were the Abkhaz mobilising politically before the Soviet Union collapsed?

Why had disputes over status been recurring for decades?

Why did questions of language, demography and political representation matter so deeply?

Why did Abkhaz society resist incorporation into an independent Georgian state strongly enough to fight a devastating war?

Simply answering “Russia” explains none of this.

It turns an entire society into a geopolitical prop.

Small peoples can have powerful neighbours and still possess political agency of their own. They can seek outside protection and still have genuine grievances. They can become economically or militarily dependent without their history suddenly becoming fictitious.

Dependence is not the same as invention.

That distinction is essential in understanding Abkhazia.

There is another historical paradox that the simple Russia-versus-Georgia narrative tends to obscure.

Abkhaz history provides little basis for portraying the Abkhaz as naturally or historically “pro-Russian”. The expansion of the Russian Empire into the Caucasus in the 19th century was disastrous for the Abkhaz and their North-West Caucasian neighbours. War, displacement and mass migration to the Ottoman Empire transformed Abkhaz society and left much of its historic population living in diaspora.

Yet in the twentieth century, Abkhaz political movements repeatedly looked to Moscow for protection against Tbilisi.

At first sight, this appears contradictory. It is less so when viewed from the position of a small nation caught between larger centres of power.

Andrei Sakharov famously described some of the Soviet Union’s constituent republics as “mini-empires”, singling out Georgia in his discussion of the relationship between dominant republican nationalities and the smaller peoples living within their borders. His point was uncomfortable but important: opposition to domination from Moscow did not necessarily prevent a national movement from reproducing similar habits of centralisation towards minorities within its own claimed territory.

The parallel should not be pushed too far. Russian and Georgian power were never comparable in scale, and their historical roles in Abkhazia were very different.

But the underlying political logic deserves attention.

An empire can deny a smaller nation’s agency in the name of imperial unity. A nation-state can do something similar in the name of territorial integrity.

For the smaller nation, the language may change while the essential question remains the same: who has the right to decide its political future?

This helps explain one of the great paradoxes of modern Abkhaz history. Turning towards Russia did not necessarily mean forgetting what Russian imperialism had done to the Abkhaz. It could instead reflect a calculation about which source of power represented the more immediate threat at a particular moment.

Seen this way, Abkhaz relations with Russia are not evidence that the Georgian–Abkhaz conflict was created by Moscow. They are partly a consequence of the conflict itself.

The real disagreement

Strip away the geopolitics and the central dispute becomes surprisingly clear.

Georgia maintains that Abkhazia falls within its internationally recognised borders and that Georgian sovereignty should ultimately be restored there.

The Abkhaz position begins from a different premise: that Abkhazia possesses its own political identity and that its population cannot legitimately be placed under Georgian authority against its will.

Those positions are extraordinarily difficult to reconcile.

Russia did not create that contradiction.

It has influenced it, exploited it at times, constrained it at others and, particularly since 2008, transformed the strategic environment in which it exists.

But the contradiction itself is Georgian–Abkhaz.

That distinction matters because the way a conflict is diagnosed determines the solution one imagines for it.

If the problem is understood simply as Russian occupation or Russian geopolitical interference, then the solution appears equally simple: remove Russia from the equation and restore Georgian jurisdiction.

But that avoids the harder question.

What happens to the Abkhaz?

Would Abkhaz society accept Georgian rule if Russian power disappeared tomorrow?

What political arrangement would the Abkhaz regard as legitimate?

What guarantees could overcome memories of war, demographic insecurity and decades of mutual distrust?

How could Georgian territorial claims and Abkhaz claims to self-determination be reconciled?

These questions remain whether Russia is present or absent.

And they are precisely the questions that disappear when the conflict is reduced to Moscow versus Tbilisi.

Russia is an important part of the geopolitical environment surrounding Abkhazia. Since 2008, its influence has become greater still.

But Russia is not the beginning of the Georgian–Abkhaz conflict, and it is not an adequate explanation for its existence.

To understand this conflict, one has to begin somewhere else: with the Georgians and the Abkhaz, with their competing historical narratives, their incompatible political claims, and the events that brought two neighbouring peoples to war.

Otherwise we are explaining Russian–Georgian relations.

We are not explaining the Georgian–Abkhaz conflict.