Georgian MFA on ‘Putin’s Strange Way of Expressing Love’ Towards Georgians

The Georgian Foreign Ministry said while commenting on Russian PM Vladimir Putin’s February 22 remarks that he hoped ties with “genuinely brotherly” people of Georgia would be restored, that Putin “seems to have very strange ways of expressing his love towards the Georgian people.”

Putin said while meeting with the Russian army commanders at a military base in Alabino near Moscow, that that Russia was always differentiating between “the Georgian leadership and the Georgian people.” “I very much hope that this genuinely brotherly people for us will ultimately realize, that Russia is not an enemy, but it is a friend and relations will be restored,” he said.

“It is symbolically important that Mr. Putin spoke of… his love for the Georgian nation in the presence of the very military commanders whose troops, acting under his authority, dealt so brutally with the Georgian population in 2008,” the Georgian Foreign Ministry said. “It is hard to imagine whom Mr. Putin is referring to when he speaks of ‘the Georgian people’. Thousands of families living in Georgia have lost relatives to Russia’s military aggression and many instances of ethnic cleansing.”

“Because of the actions of the Russian authorities and of Mr. Putin in particular, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes and become refugees. Their houses have either been razed to the ground by Russian armoured vehicles or misappropriated by Russian servicemen and all sorts of criminals, and monuments of Georgian culture continue to be ruined in Georgia’s occupied territories,’ the statement reads.

Meanwhile on February 23 a group of Georgian bloggers and online forum commentators launched a coordinated campaign involving posting anti-occupation messages on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s official Facebook page. One Georgian blogger reported that posts like “Dmitry Anatolevich I demand withdrawal of the Russian occupational forces from Georgia” were deleted by a page administrator. The Russian President’s official Facebook page was even inaccessible for users from Georgia for several hours on February 23. It was unblocked by Thursday evening, but again became inaccessible for users from Georgia later on the same day.

Also on February 23 – when Russia marks the Day of Homeland Defender – President Medvedev visited Glavkino, Russia’s largest studio complex, where he met with cast and producers of August. Eight movie – Russia’s yet another war drama unfolding against the background of August, 2008 war.

Medvedev said events of August, 2008 should be remembered in order not to allow them reoccur and “if they reoccur anyway our response should be as tough and effective” as it was less than four years ago.

He said that this film accomplished its “important mission of showing the truth” about “the five-day war” in August, 2008. Medvedev also hailed the movie for, as he put it, “not triggering hatred towards the Georgians.”

“The Georgian people has nothing to do with that. Those leaders, who were taking decisions, are to be blamed and not those who had to take arms, probably, against their will,” Medvedev said.