Some of the volunteers who came to defend Abkhazia were still very young, indeed one of them was still a child -- Valery Berkhamov, a Circassian, who exchanged his school desk for life on the front line.

Valery was only 16 years old when he left his native Kabardino-Balkaria without informing his family for the war in Abkhazia. Musabi Berkhamov began searching for his son in various places of ill repute.

От обеспокоенного гражданина Абхазии

English version: Peace is for Abkhazia, war is for Ukraine? by A Concerned Citizen of Abkhazia

24 февраля ровно в четыре часа (по украинскому времени) Киев бомбили, нам объявили, что началась военная спецоперация. Вот так строки советского поэта Бориса Ковынева, с минимальными изменениями под обстановку, актуализировались 80 лет спустя.

In 1989 at the start of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict the late Academician Andrei Sakharov in one of his last articles called Georgia a ‘mini-empire’ (Ogonёk 1989, 31).

Later, describing the relationship between Abkhazia and Georgia, he wrote: "I tend to justify the Abkhazian position. I think we should regard with special attention the problems of small peoples: freedom and rights of big nations should not be exercised at the expense of small ones" (Znamya, 1991, No.10, p.69).

Joseph de Baye (1853-1931), French archaeologist and traveller. Baron Joseph de Baye (French) was initially a keen amateur archaeologist. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Ministry of Public Instruction sent him on a mission to collect pottery in the Russian Empire. He gave public lectures in Paris on his return and furthered knowledge of Russia's archaeological and ethnographic treasures through his publications - gathered under the title "Souvenirs d'une mission en Abkhasie, en Crimée, en Géorgie, en Lituanie, en Nouvelle Flussie, en Petite Russie", and by presenting the collections he brought back at the Musée Guimet, and building up an exceptional collection of photographs.

Astanda Ardzinba

Jean-Marc Danto from the city of Saint Nazaire in France came to Abkhazia in 1997 to build schools as part of a humanitarian mission of an international organisation; however, circumstances developed in such a way that the French engineer remained forever in the republic, where he founded a successful business.