Former GD-MP, leaving party to “tell the truth” accuses US Ambassador of damaging her country’s reputation

MP Mikheil Kavelashvili, who had no controversies with the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party but left it last month to “openly tell the public the truth,” has accused the US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan of downgrading his country’s reputation in Georgia more than the “Russian soft force” would have done that.

 

In a letter released on Friday, Kavelashvili suggested that the Ambassador’s silence to the “radical moves” of the United National Movement (UNM) party and the latter’s intentions “to drag Georgia” into Russia’s war in Ukraine “was perceived as the support of the UNM in the public.”

 

“The cause of the accusations that the US wants to draw Georgia in the war should be found not in the FSB book [as Degnan stated], but in the statements of the people funded by Degnan, or affiliated with her, or in the  Ambassador’s refusal to distance herself from the statements,” Kavelashvili said.

 

“Madam Ambassador, in order to protect the image of the US, it would be good if you would publicly distance yourself from those provocations carried out by the UNM. However, unfortunately, I do not remember any of your speeches on this topic. Moreover, you publicly supported Georgia’s joining sanctions on Russia,” Kavelashvili said.

 

Kavelashvili stated that the head of Transparency International Georgia, Eka Gigauri and Georgian Public Defender Nino Lomjaria, were those “ liked and supported” by the embassy, “encouraging Georgia’s involvement in the war.”

 

He noted that the ambassador “had made no statemmnents” against the “rhetoric,” just “on the contrary “praised” the people.

 

Degnan stated earlier this month that the allegations that the US wanted to drag Georgia in Putin’s war against Ukraine was “directly from the FSB book.”

 

The opposition said that the three MPs, Kavelashvili, Sozar Subari and Dimitri Khundadze, who left the GD “to tell the public the truth,” would have voiced the GD founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, in parliament, making “pro-Russian statements, harming Georgia’s Western integration.”