Ukrainian gov’t representatives made “open” calls for second front in Georgia – PM

Irakli Garibashvili, the prime minister of Georgia, on Friday said in parliament that the members of the Ukrainian government were “openly” campaigning for the second front in Georgia, and that their allied domestic “radical opposition groups” were staging “provocations and rallies” to change the authorities in a bid to “drag the country” into Russia-Ukraine war. 

“The Ukrainian government representatives have openly stated that if Mikheil Saakashvili [arrested the former president] were in office, the country would be at war with Russia. This would be definitely like this and they [ the United National Movement] would have turned the country into a battlefield”, Garibashvili said. 

He stated that his government’s move, not to allow charger flights from Tbilisi to Ukraine to transport volunteers shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, served the goal to prevent the war inside the country. 

The head of the Georgian government claimed that accepting the flights, in the situation when the country “is neither a member of NATO, nor the EU, and has 20 percent of its territories occupied, would be devastating”. 

Garibashvili reiterated that his government had supported Ukraine “in all formats” and had ensured “all types of support” in its disposal, and reminded the opposition lawmaker that while in office the UNM government had “refused to campaign to impose sanctions on Russia for invading Georgia in 2008, signed a treacherous document over the war, sold all strategic facilities to Russia and canceled visa regime for Rusians”.