"This is Vladimir. He is my first son."Indira Bartsits proudly gestures towards one of her infant twins, who were born just minutes before the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, unexpectedly visited her room at a maternity hospital in Sukhumi, the Abkhaz capital, during his trip to the disputed region earlier this month.
She said she only decided to name the child after the Russian premier on the spur of the moment, but agreed that she was grateful to Moscow for recognising Abkhazia as an independent state a year ago.
Doctors at the hospital suggested she should name the other twin after Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, but she preferred to call him after her brother-in-law, who was killed during Abkhazia’s battles for independence from Georgia in the early 1990s.
Read more from my recent trip to Abkhazia on the Al Jazeera website here - and more about Georgia seizing ships carrying fuel to Abkhazia (including the latest on the strange dispute about the opening of a Benetton shop in Sukhumi) here.
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