TBILISI, DFWatch – A Georgian security analyst says today’s attack on Abkhazia’s leader could have been carried out by Moscow-loyal forces who are angered by Alexander Ankvab’s efforts to disrupt them.

Mamuka Areshidze, chair of Caucasus Center for Strategic Research says he sees the attack in connection with ‘forces which have strong connections with Moscow and which distribute money transferred from Moscow together’.

He explains that Ankvab’s policy is to disrupt the activities of these forces, and that is absolutely unacceptable to them, which could have motivated them to carry out such an attack.

In Areshidze’s view, Ankvab has a rigid nature and isn’t characterized by political flexibility. He is one who faces problems head on.

“When he came into government, the first thing he did was that he took the prosecutor’s office into the Interior Ministry. Currently the Interior Minister is announced wanted and the main patron for this political-criminal group was the Interior Minister and Ankvab fights with him, accordingly he receives a response.”

Areshidze notes that these forces are directly related to persons, who run the processes in the breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia on the Kremlin’s orders.

“These officials run the situation as it best suits to them, transfer the appropriate information to the heads and this head, which may even know the real picture, cannot change it, because there is a corrupt system in Russia itself and what is in Russia, it is both in these so-called republics,” Areshidze adds.

The de facto president of Abkhazia Alexander Ankvab was today attacked while in his car. This is the sixth attack on him since 2005. As a result of the attack one member of Ankvab guard died. Two others were heavily wounded.

Abkhazian law enforcement has sealed the region’s de facto borders with Russian and Georgia while a search for the attackers is ongoing, according to Russian media.