Recently, when responding to the article "Leftist deviation of the separatists" the San Marinese "left" Alessandro Rossi categorically denied that he was in any way connected to the security services of Russia. The article was about the trip of Abkhazian "government delegation" to Italy and San Marino, and it noted that successors of the KGB, now called the FSB, took advantage of their old connections to organize this trip. One would have taken his word for it but facts say something entirely different. In particular, on May 28th “Abkhazian foreign ministry” published a report on a meeting of Italian businessmen with the “minister” Chirikba. At the meeting, two out of four Italians had a surname Rossi - Leonardo and Lamberto Rossi. As if one Rossi in San-Marino was not enough, now we have two more in Italy. We learn from the same report that the “Abkhazian foreign ministry” apparently has its own representative in Italy in the face of Mauro Murjia. In short, Abkhazians have an embassy in Italy though they do not have diplomatic relations with it. That’s what “authority “of KGB does.

Those Italians that were on a visit Abkhazia till May 31st were presenting themselves as representatives of the agricultural company LPR. A fact that Italian agrarians have become “saviours” of the Russian officialdom was confirmed by a scandal that erupted in the beginning of April in the Russian media. On April 5th the governor of Volgograd and his deputy together with their 70 close circle flew to Italy in a charter plane where they celebrated, first, birthday of the deputy on April the 6th and later that of the governor on April 8th. And they have earned it, it seems. The governor - Sergei Bozhenov was appointed on the post just recently, at the end of January. His predecessor has fallen “victim” of the December elections in which the United Russia party got miserable number of votes in the Volgograd Oblast. While under Bozhenov, in the March 4th Presidential electrons Volgograd set a record in votes for Putin - 63%. That’s what we call job well done. The man did the impossible in just one month. He managed people to fall madly in love with “the father and the provider”. And his service has not gone unnoticed. At the expense of the state he had a birthday party in Italy and he did not even forget his deputy to prolong the celebrations. But there is never a shortage of envious people and this fact was leaked. To hush the scandal the Russian authorities turned to a traditional method. The general prosecutor’s office was charged with investigation how legal this voyage of seventy people and their adventures in Italy at the expense of the state was. And the prosecutor’s office have checked everything and concluded that these seventy people were sent to Italy by the Volgograd district administration with a purpose of sharing experience with local pig farmers. And papers confirming this were apparently sent form Italy at the very first request. That’s what we call operative positions of the FSB. Questions even were not asked. But that’s not our business. Let Russians worry about their budget. We just want to say that apparently Italian agricultural sector is well “supervised” by the Russians security services. They get whatever they need be it making false papers or sending them to Abkhazians to do joint projects. But what Italians or Abkhazians have to lose here. Such “joint” projects are devised in the Russian security services to spite us, Georgia, and are financed by them as well. The Russian security services have so many companies opened around the world starting from the twenties of the XX century that they might have lost count themselves. Until now we have thought that such companies were connected to new technologies to make industrial espionage easier for the Russian security services. But, it turns out they have spread into all spheres. Otherwise what they were doing with the pig farms. But then, they turned out quite useful, didn’t they? The result of this may well be a sharp development of pig farming in Abkhazia. Italian pigs, Russian feed, Abkhazian climate, what else is needed for development of the sector?

As it turns out, apart from pig farming the Russian security services “supervise” a lot in Italy. This is clear from amazing adventures of Abkhazian-based journalist Nadezhda Venediktova in Italy. She published them under the romantic title the Roman Holiday as soon as she returned from there. We will not talk about impressions of Venediktova here. Our attention was drawn to the part where her meeting with Heidi Tagliavini, the former head of the UN Mission in Georgia and the head of the independent International Fact Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia August 2008 is described. “On May 26th here (Florence – auth.), at the Palazzo Corsini she marked her retirement from the post of the Deputy Foreign Minister of Switzerland. Before guests from the around the Europe, including numerous guests from Russia, I have passed warm congratulations of the Abkhazian government and presented her with seven silver medals with inscriptions of thousand-year old Abkhazian churches as well as a book by Stanislav Lakoba signed by the author where the latter proudly names Tagliavini “the golden fish “ of the international community.

How do you like this? We thought this Tagliavini unbiased and instead she appears to be Russian-Abkhazian “golden fish”. Say someone this in Moscow one would not have needed to take a long guess. Shameful Report on the "August War” where Tagliavini left a huge room for speculations of Russian propaganda, one cannot call other than execution of the desires of the Russian elite. But for fulfilment of which requests the Swiss diplomat deserved this epithet from one of the principal ideologues of the Abkhazian separatism?

But the main thing here is that Russian security services do not let a moment slip from their hands without shoving Abkhazian emissaries to leading world politicians. That’s how Venediktova was imposed on Europeans at the Tagliavini Soiree. It is interesting to know how much Venediktova’s seven-day trip to Italy to once again remind Europeans about existence of “the republic of ABkahzia” cost Russian taxpayers. But then the Russian budget endures everything. There is always enough money to bribe foreign politicians there. Just recently, the US ambassador to Russia Michael McFall confessed that Americans could not bribe the former President of Kyrgyzstan as Russians paid the man ten times more.