New Abkhazian foreign minister proposed for polygraph test
New Abkhazian foreign minister
Irakli Tuzhba has been appointed as the new foreign minister of Abkhazia, having previously served as deputy minister. The news of his appointment reached him while he was in the USA. Opponents seized on this to attempt to unseat him before he even took office.
Tuzhba will replace the controversial former minister Inal Ardzinba, who was recently dismissed under unclear circumstances.
Irakli Tuzhba, considered an experienced diplomat, has led the Abkhaz delegation at the Geneva Discussions for many years. However, his opponents are questioning the legitimacy of his appointment.
They are using the fact that at the time of the presidential decree, Tuzhba and his wife Yulia were vacationing in the USA as a key point of contention. Yulia works for UNICEF, a detail that several anonymous Telegram channels, advocating for the adoption of the “foreign agents” law, are exploiting.
One such channel claims that Yulia went to the US not for a vacation but as part of another grant, taking her husband along.
“This is how high-ranking officials are taken to ‘friendly countries’,” the channel asserts, demanding that upon Irakli Tuzhba’s return, both he and Yulia undergo necessary checks, including a lie detector test. This seems to imply a suspicion that the new minister might have been “recruited” abroad.
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Editor of the Telegram channel “Aiasara,” journalist Nizfa Arshba, in turn, believes that behind the campaign to discredit Irakli Tuzhba stands his former boss, Inal Ardzinba.
According to Arshba, during his 2.5 years as minister, Inal Ardzinba “systematically destroyed Abkhazia’s 30-year foreign policy in favor of his mercenary interests.” The journalist laments that those who never criticized this misconduct are now “clinging desperately to someone who quietly worked for the good of the Motherland for many years,” namely – to Irakli Tuzhba.
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