Sergei Bagapsh, Eduard Kokoiti, and Igor Smirnov, Russian-installed leaders respectively of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria, conferred with Russian government officials in Moscow on November 16-18, held a joint news conference, and were featured extensively on Russian state television channels.
All three made it clear that by seeking the “independence” of their territories they meant their ultimate affiliation to the Russian Federation.
In a sign of growing confidence, the trio advertised themselves as “proud to be citizens of Russia.” They also made unusually open statements of loyalty to Russia partly based on Soviet nostalgia: “Moscow remains our capital just as it was in Soviet times. For us, this is our capital whether one likes this fact or not,” Bagapsh declared
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The trio declared in unison that they did not need a Kosovo precedent or model to justify their secession. Indeed they took pains to distance themselves from the Kosovo case, arguing that their own cases had greater validity. Smirnov dismissed the Kosovo case as “academic talk….Recognition or non-recognition of Kosovo bears no relation to our state.” Bagapsh would “not in the least compare our movement toward independence with the case of Kosovo,” particularly since the [Moscow-encouraged] Serbian referendum recently decided for Serbia’s territorial integrity. Kokoiti is “not counting on [a precedent in] Kosovo, we have stronger legal and political grounds for recognition than Kosovo does”.
Their political preconditions and accompanying propaganda line, as well as their insouciance about Kosovo, indicate that the secessionist leaderships now behave more confidently than at any time in the past. By the same token they indicate that Moscow has decided to impose a deep freeze on the three sets of negotiations until further notice.
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