The head of a de facto security body in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has been quoted by Russian state media as saying Moscow is preparing to build a naval base in the Black Sea coastal enclave.
RIA Novosti also quoted separatist Security Council head Sergei Shamba as saying on January 12 that construction on the purported facility should begin this year.
Tbilisi and the overwhelming majority of the international community regard Abkhazia and nearby South Ossetia as Georgian territory occupied by Russia. Aside from Russia, only Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru, and Syria have recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent.
Shamba did not say what kind of Russian vessels were expected to use the planned base.
The Abkhaz region's Moscow-backed de facto president, Aslan Bjaniya, said in October that a deal had been signed to locate a Russian naval base in the port of Ochamchira.
Separatists in Abkhazia tried to declare independence from Georgia in 1992, a move that set up 16 years of tensions with Tbilisi before a 2008 war involving Russian troops.
Russian forces supporting the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia control around one-fifth of internationally recognized Georgian territory.
Moscow's invasion and the annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 marked a grab at another strategically sensitive Black Sea coastal region.
Russia's Black Sea Fleet is headquartered in the port of Sevastopol in Crimea and has come under repeated attack from Ukrainian forces since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.