President Saakashvili said on July 9 that the U.S. President’s strong support to Georgia expressed in Moscow was an unambiguous message to Russia, which helped to prevent possible renewal of hostilities.
“I want to say it boldly, that all their [Russia’s] aggressive plans for the nearest perspective are foiled and there will be no war… any more,” he said in a televised remarks made at a meeting with the National Security Council.
“Today I can say it very boldly: all types of fears and expectations about the threat have not come true and all kinds of hopes about revenge and about carrying out new military confrontation by the aggressive part of our neighbor, which of course wants to take over Tbilisi, has not come true,” Saakashvili said.
He compared the current situation to the one in lead-up to the last year’s August war and said that then the west had failed to give Russia such unambiguous message like it did now.
“It is a fact that refusal by some of our partners to grant Georgia MAP [NATO Membership Action Plan] at the last year’s Bucharest summit had very grave consequences,” Saakashvili said and added that top-level U.S.-Russia summit in Sochi in April, 2008 also failed to send clear signals to Moscow and as a result Russia “made ambiguous conclusions”.
“[Russia’s] provocation [before the August war] was not actually responded adequately by the west – and it was a factor as well, which somewhat encouraged Putin to carry out the attack [on Georgia],” he said in a speech in which he mentioned the Russia’s Prime Minister for several times.
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