Territorial Integrity Can’t be Solved with Force, Georgian President Says

President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili has said “we cannot solve this problem [of territorial integrity] with force, we all know this.”

In her interview with journalists of international media yesterday, President Zurabishvili said “we have taken that commitment voluntarily not to resolve to the use of force to the conflicts.”

“So, the only other alternative that is known on the surface of the earth is diplomacy,” President Zurabishvili noted.

Unfortunately, she continued, “we have on the other side, the government of Russia that does not seem to be prone to diplomacy and we are seeing what is happening today.”

President Zurabishvili said, considering major powers’ inability to really get Russia into the discussion over Ukraine,that Georgia today does not have the means to bring Moscow “to real dialogue and to de-escalation.”

Georgia’s President said de-escalation has to start on the occupation line, “all these incidents that are happening every day: hostage-taking, borderization, Russification, all of that, we have to see signs of the de-escalation, to see that there is a meaning to trying a dialogue.”

She said she would be ready for dialogue and take risks for the dialogue “any time if I see the signs.” “Unfortunately, I do not see the signs today.”

Grilled over her 2009 remarks that “leaders of both Russia and Georgia are at fault” over 2008 events, Zurabishvili replied: “since 1801 the four wars between Russia and Georgia, there were all Russia’s responsibility.”

“Russia is the one that has come on territory, it’s not Georgia that has passed on the territory of Russia,” she continued: “and so every conflict is the responsibility of Russia and that’s what we are seeing today.”

But she also said, another discussion concerns “what is it that the authorities have to do when we know the [Russian] provocation is starting and we know what the Americans were saying, I was there when the Americans were coming and saying “do not walk into the provocations.”

“I think that the lesson learned – and that is a very interesting part – is that the one we have seen Zelenskyy applying. He has been very, very careful not to walk into the provocation,” the Georgian President noted.

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