Georgia’s president, locked in a standoff with her own government, on Monday appealed to European countries to confront Russian attempts to impose control over her country.
President Salome Zourabichvili was speaking after a fourth night of clashes between protesters and police since the ruling Georgian Dream party announced last week it was suspending talks on joining the European Union.
Critics saw it as confirmation of Russia-influenced people’s shift away from pro-Western policies and back into Moscow’s orbit, which the ruling party denies.
“We want our European destiny returned to us,” Zourabichvili, who has personally protested with riot police, told France Inter radio. “This is a rebellion of the entire country.”
Zourabichvili, whose powers are mainly ceremonial, said Russia, already at war in Ukraine, was running a “hybrid strategy” against other countries such as Georgia and Moldova and NATO and EU member Romania.
“There is a very strong need for very clear moral and political support from Europe,” said the 72-year-old president, who was born in France to Georgian parents and once served as the French ambassador to Georgia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russia was interfering in the situation in Georgia, which he compared to the 2014 “Maidan” revolution in Ukraine that overthrew the pro-Russian president.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Sunday that Georgia is “rapidly moving towards the dark abyss on the Ukrainian path”, predicting it will end “very badly”.
The United States and the European Union see it as a retreat from democracy by Georgia, a South Caucasus country of 3.7 million people that sits at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and was once part of the Soviet Union.
The government, which earlier this year enacted a law against “foreign agents” and imposed restrictions on LGBT rights, says it wants to protect Georgia from outside interference and prevent it from being dragged into a war with Russia like Ukraine. Is working for.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused the opposition of “coordinated violence” aimed at overthrowing the constitutional order.
fireworks and tear gas
On Sunday night, thousands of protesters gathered again in the capital, Tbilisi, and some threw fireworks at police, who responded with water cannons and tear gas.
Nikoloz Miruashvili, one of the protesters, said, “I have come here for a very simple reason, to defend my European future and my country’s democracy.”
Some protesters remained outside throughout the night, but police eventually ended the standoff by moving them away from the Parliament building.
Georgia’s Interior Ministry said 21 police officers were injured in the overnight protests, while 113 people have been injured since the beginning of the current unrest.
Hundreds of protesters have also been injured in recent days and the United States has condemned the excessive use of police force.
Georgia’s public ombudsman said that 124 of the 156 people arrested at the rallies had complained of police using violence against them, calling it a “very disturbing number”.
Zurab Japaridze, leader of the opposition movement Coalition for Change, was briefly detained by police, but later posted on social media that he had been released.
Hundreds of diplomats and civil servants have signed open letters in protest at the decision to suspend negotiations with the EU and stop receiving any funding from the bloc for four years. At least four Georgian ambassadors have resigned.
Ilya Topuria, a martial arts fighter who has a large number of fans in the country, wrote in an Instagram post: “I protest the decision to end our accession negotiations to the EU. I am ashamed to see how the children of Georgia are treated. are treated.” “This is not called freedom.”
Zourabichvili says she will not step down as president when her term ends this month because the parliament that will select her successor was elected in October elections that the opposition says were rigged.
The Election Commission says that the voting was fair. Prime Minister Kobakhidze said on Sunday that Zourabichvili was reacting emotionally to the opposition’s election defeat and that he would have to leave the presidential palace at the end of the month.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
