Vladislav Ardzinba, who died after suffering for almost a decade from a mysterious and increasingly debilitating illness, was a wartime leader and the first president of Abkhazia. He was born in May 1945 in the village of Lower Eshera (just north of Abkhazia's capital, Sukhumi), where his father taught history. He worked at Moscow's Oriental Institute under Yevgenij Primakov, who, as Russian Foreign Minister, was later to play a role in the post-war Georgian-Abkhazian negotiating process. The...
Full Story: The Independent
