Russian First Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Loshchinin met with acting Foreign Minister of breakaway Abkhazia Sergey Shamba on February 25-26 in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported.

“The issue of resolving the Georgina-Abkhaz conflict was discussed during the talks. Russia, as a facilitator [in negotiations], supports the new Abkhaz leadership in its attempts to resume the peace process in frames of existing mechanisms, aiming at implementation of the Sochi agreement,” the statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry of February 28 reads.

In 2003 Russian President Vladimir Putin and then Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze agreed, during a meeting in Sochi, to resume the railway connection between the two countries via Abkhazia and simultaneously to launch the process of returning Georgian internally displaced persons back to Abkhazia. The Sochi agreement also envisages rehabilitation of the Enguri hydro power plant, which is located at the administrative border between Abkhazia and the rest of Georgia.