Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he has “no reason to doubt” the statement made by Bidzina Ivanishvili, the honorary chairman of Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, that the West had encouraged Georgia to open a “second front” against Russia.
“I see no reason to disbelieve them. They are in dialogue with Western countries, which have been directly provoking military action against Russia. I have no reason not to trust them,” Lavrov told Izvestia during the BRICS summit in Kazan.
The discussion of opening a “second front” began when Georgian Dream leaders suggested that certain forces in the West, whom they refer to as the “global war party,” were pushing for Georgia to engage in military conflict with Russia amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, as well as Western politicians and diplomats, have firmly denied these claims. They insist that no such call for war has been made to Georgia.
In an interview aired on October 21 by Imedi TV, Ivanishvili claimed that a senior official from one Western country had directly urged former Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili to open a “second front” and even proposed conducting partisan warfare in the mountains.
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze commented on October 22, stating that the government had faced immense pressure to “save the country from war and destruction.”
