Chechnya 2008
Abkhazia 2008
Oil Spill at Tuzla
THE VANISHING RUSSIA
Anna Politkovskaya
BELARUS
BOLSHOI RENOVATION
Unburied WWII Bones
Lake Disappears
Jews in Moscow
Iceland

  Abkhazia 2008
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Two men are carrying school chairs and desks on a motorbike past a destroyed building on the outskirts of Sukhumi, the capital city of the self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia. Abkhazia broke away from Georgia as a result of 1992-1993 war. Russia recently lifted economic sanctions against Abkhazia.
The once-thriving Sukhumi port looks like a ship graveyard of rusted crafts wedged into the sand.
A stretch of railroad near Sukhumi. A train passes here once a week.
Tamara Ezugbaya, head of the seaside village of Lower Eshera near Sukhumi, sits near front of the grave situated right in front of her house, where four of her five sons were buried after being killed fighting in the war against Georgia in 1992-1993, resulting from which Abkhazia broke away from Georgia and proclaimed its independence which has not been yet recognized by other countries.
President of the self-declared Republic of Abkhazia Sergei V. Bagapsh in his office in Sukhumi.
Georgian resident of the town of Gal Fridon Makatsaria, 58, right, who among thousands of other Georgian refuges was allowed to return to his home place in Abkhazia a few years ago only to find his wife killed and his family home burnt down, stands with his son Felix, 32, near the ruins of their family home in the town of Gal.
Abkhazian army soldiers jogging in the morning past a destroyed building in Sukhumi.
Jobs in Abkhazia are scarce. This man is lucky being hired to repaire a sidewalk in front of the burnt out and still not restored building of the former Soviet [Georgian] Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia
The atmosphere in the predominantly Georgian-populated Gal district of Abkhazia is depressing. Abkhazian officials say that almost 60,000 Georgian refugess were allowed to return to the Gal district from Georgia in 1999. But the streets of Gal, the district capital, appear lifeless and dead quiet with many houses destroyed or ravaged by war.
   
  All photographs on this site were shot by Sergei L. Loiko. designed by : Impress Vision