Georgia
Georgian President Denounces Russian Plan for Navy Base in Breakaway Region
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili on Tuesday 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, Abkhazia’s separatist leader Aslan Bzhania said he has signed an agreement with Russia to establish a Russian naval base at the Black Sea town of Ochamchira “in the near future.”
“Russia’s plan to transform the Ochamchira 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,” Zurabishvili said during an address to parliament on Tuesday.
Zurabishvili — who has repeatedly clashed with the Georgian government and accused it of being too close to Moscow — also warned Russia had “begun fresh attacks in its hybrid war on Georgia.”
Her role 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 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 is a seaside town located near Georgia’s key maritime location of Anaklia on the Black Sea. It has been a base for Russian patrol vessels operating in the Black Sea since 2009.
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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.
Ukraine’s defence intelligence service said in October that Russia was actively “reconstructing the (Ochamchira) port infrastructure in some places to ensure that warships can be based there.”
Despite its stalled counter-offensive on the land, Ukraine has had more success fighting Russia in the Black Sea, sinking several Russian warships and being able to operate an export corridor for commercial ships along its southern coast.
President Volodymyr Zelensky 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 for Moscow.
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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