The Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia (better known under Russian abbreviation SVR) on March 9 claimed: “dissatisfaction is growing in Washington D.C. with the ruling Georgian Dream party which is diverging from the path of unquestioned fulfillment of the American demands.”
Below is a compilation of some of the remarks made by politicians from the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party and the opposition in response to the SVR statement:
Ruling Party Reactions
MP Mamuka Mdinaradze, Georgian Dream Parliamentary Faction Chair: “Why does the attempt [by the SVR] to create anti-western sentiments precisely coincide with the timing [of the EU-mediated dialogue]? And why are some [United] National Movement leaders and the Russian Foreign Intelligence saying the same things? In the modern world, today, nobody says that the Georgian Dream has diverged from Western standards and the [pro]-U.S. attitudes. This is what the occupiers and multiple UNM leaders say.
MP Nikoloz Samkharadze, Foreign Relations Committee Chair: “They [SVR] are with this statement trying to damage and sow tension in U.S.-Georgian relations. It is interesting that statements by [SVR chief Sergey] Naryshkin, [MP Sergey] Gavrilov and others, often coincide with the West becoming more active in Georgia.”
Opposition Reactions
Giorgi Baramidze, United National Movement: “These are our people and do not touch them [GD], they [SVR] are telling the Americans directly. This is the reality we are living in, unfortunately – what we have been talking about all these years – that there is an oligarch in Georgia, who is directly implementing and fulfilling Putin’s plan to make Georgia a vassal state of Russia.”
Gigi Ugulava, European Georgia: “They [SVR] practically threw a lifeline to the Georgian Dream by exposing that the U.S. is supposedly intervening in Georgia’s internal affairs. Now let us see how the U.S. intervenes: It asks the Georgian Government not to repress its own people, [it says] that respecting human rights is necessary, that storming the opposition’s office and arresting its leader is restricted and bad behavior – in other words, it asks for democracy.”
Grigol Gegelia, Lelo for Georgia: “This shocking statement, on the one hand, confirms how worried mother Russia and the KGB are over their favorite pro-Russian government [GD], and on the other, what we already know very well… that this not a government with a Euro-Atlantic course. This government may be loyal to the U.S., to Europe and to Georgia’s pro-Western course in its words. But in terms of its deeds, it has been ruining everything pro-European and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration prospects in its everyday practices over the last 8 years.”
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