SUKHUMI, Abkhazia -- Zaury Azichba was happy, drunk, sad and angry -- all at the same time.


Standing on the sloping roof of Sukhumi's burned-out government house, a champagne bottle in one hand, and an Abkhaz green, white and red flag in the other, he tried to explain what victory day meant to him and to his three friends standing with him on the rooftop.


"This is our land," he said, gesturing toward the steep sloping hills rising up behind the town. "The Georgians tried to crush us as if we weren't even human but my brothers and I kicked them out."


In the streets below, a procession of some 10,000 Abkhazians marched by the nearby war memorial, then onwards to a stadium on the outskirts of town where they listened to the Abkhaz leader Vladislav Ardzinba urge them to "not lose heart ... but to protect our country from those who would bring destruction and war."


It is 12 months since Abkhaz fighters inflicted a final humiliating blow on the demoralized Georgian army, ending a 14-month war that killed some 12,000 people and left the Abkhazian coastal resorts in ruins, its lush countryside littered with mines.


Even today the atmosphere in the Black Sea republic remains at best subdued.


State salaries have not been paid for months. Sukhumi still seems like a ghost town with pensioners scurrying along rubbish-strewn sidewalks and passing bombed out shops to line up for bread.


But victory in the war has brought with it a sense of quiet determination. In an interview with The Moscow Times, Vladislav Ardzinba acknowledged that it might take many years before any country recognized Abkhazian independence but he said that "establishing a secure and lasting peace" was his priority, not seeking international recognition.


Ardzinba condemned "Georgian bandits" for attempting to undermine stability in Abkhazia by launching a series of ambushes in the southern border region.


In the past four days 13 people have been killed in almost identical attacks inside the CIS-controlled security zone that runs along the Georgian-Abkhazian border.


A UN military observer speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed that the security situation in the Gali region had deteriorated significantly. He said that he had received numerous reports of Abkhaz militia terrorizing those Georgians who have returned to their houses in Gali.


An estimated 280,000 Georgian refugees have fled Abkhazia since the war started. Russia has been mediating in negotiations to allow them to return and last month, after talks with President Boris Yeltsin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Ardzinba said they would start returning to the Gali region this month.


But he said Friday there was no question of a large-scale repatriation process beginning at the moment, and insisted that the Georgians must first move all their forces from the Khodor gorge region of Abkhazia in line with a May 14 peace accord.