Parliament speaker slams EU official’s “superficiality” on Russia-Georgia flights from “comfortable seat”

Georgian parliament speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Friday slammed Luke Devine, the European External Action Service Director for Russia, Eastern partnership and Central Asia, for his latest comments earlier this week that the resumption of Russia-Georgia flights in May was not a “unilateral decision” made by the Kremlin. 

 

“Resumption of flights is not unilateral, as it requires the consent of the country where the plane is to land, and so you cannot unilaterally decide to fly to this or that country, this decision itself was bilateral”, the EU official said at the 12th session of the EU-Georgia Association council meeting in Brussels on Thursday. 

 

In his press comments, Papuashvili claimed Georgia’s non-accepting the flights following Moscow’s move on May 10 to lift travel and visa restrictions with Georgia, would have meant imposing sanctions on Russia and created security threats for the country amid the absence of any security umbrellas, adding it was a “superficial assessment” made from a “comfortable seat” from Brussels. 

 

Papuashvili  also said Tbilisi had not received an answer so far why the European Council refused last June ro grant Georgia its membership candidate status when it enjoyed “better democracy” than two other applicants for the bloc’s membership, concluding it was a “political decision”.