(Reuters) – Crowds of protesters rallied outside the parliament on Friday in the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, where opposition has been building to a recent investment agreement with Moscow, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported.
Video posted by TASS showed a truck ramming into the gates surrounding the parliament in the capital Sukhumi and throngs of people pouring into the courtyard.
Other footage published by local Telegram channels showed protesters tying rope to the metal gates and attempting to tear them down.
TASS said several hundred people had joined the rally. Reuters was unable to corroborate that figure.
Russia recognised Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia, as independent states in 2008 after Russian troops repelled a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia in a five-day war. Most of the world recognises Abkhazia as part of Georgia, from which it broke away during wars in the 1990s.
Abkhazian lawmakers were set to vote on Friday on the ratification of an investment agreement signed in October in Moscow by Russian Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov and his Abkhaz counterpart Kristina Ozgan.
Abkhazian opposition leaders say the agreement with Moscow, which would allow for investment projects by Russian legal entities to be implemented in Abkhazia, would harm the region’s economic sovereignty.
TASS said the parliamentary session on Friday had been cancelled.
Earlier this week Abkhazia’s self-styled president, Aslan Bzhania, held an emergency security council meeting after protesters blocked a key highway and rallied in central Sukhumi to demand the release of four activists.
The activists, who were subsequently released, had been detained for opposing the passage of a law regulating the construction industry which references the Russian-Abkhazian agreement.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
