![]() ![]() there has been such a law since the 1930s,” quipped Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on her Telegram channel, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in the U.S. when commenting on criticisms that Georgia’s proposed law was incompatible with the European Union norms and ran counter to Georgia’s desire to join the bloc. The Russian Foreign Ministry also pointed the finger at the U.S. Much like Georgian officials, he passed the buck to the United States, saying the controversial bill was inspired by American legislation. “The Kremlin has nothing to do with it,” Peskov said. Fight!” read a poster carried by one Russian.īoth Moscow and Tbilisi shrugged off the Russia parallels. ![]() “I’m from Russia and this is what I escaped from. Georgian protesters and Western diplomats feared that Georgia was about to go down the same path – a claim the Georgian government continues to deny.Įven some Russian expats showed up at the rallies against the bill. Plus, much of Georgia is convinced that the bill on foreign agents, which threatened to demonize and possibly sabotage non-profit groups and critical media, was inspired by similar Russian legislation that ultimately led to harassment and crackdown of non-government organizations and independent media there. In the light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s talk of Russia’s commitment to peace at its borders comes off as a bit rich. “It is important to us that peace is maintained along our borders but the situation there leaves a lot to be desired,” he said. “Although we don’t have relations with Georgia, it is still a neighboring state and the state of affairs there inevitably prompts our concerns,” Dmitry Peskov said on March 9, just as Georgia was stepping back from the crisis. The Kremlin itself made no such threats, but President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson said that Moscow was keeping a worried eye on Georgia. Unlike Ukraine, “nobody here ever considered us to be one people with the Georgians.” Tbilisi will get pounded without any fuss.”Ĭlaiming that Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine was in fact Moscow going soft on a brotherly neighbor, she said Russia had no reason to pull its punches when it comes to Georgia. In case of a repeat of the 2008 Georgia-Russia war, “nobody is going to coddle Georgia and even bother to send troops there. “It was clear from the outset that this entire brouhaha was needed only to create a second front for us,” said Russia Today’s editor-in-chief on her Telegram channel. The propaganda tsarina Margarita Simonyan interpreted events in Tbilisi as an attempt to pick a fight with Moscow. Georgian cities, however, remain full of Russians today and little suggests any reverse exodus. Pointing to reports of an outbound traffic jam at the border from Georgia to Russia, Solovyev claimed that the Russians who escaped to Georgia amid the war in Ukraine, were now running back. Kremlin’s propagandists like Vladimir Solovyev gloated at an alleged panic among Georgia-based Russians supposedly caused by Russia-bashing at the protests. “They are similar in nature, as here also the goal is to plant an irritant on the border with Russia.” ![]() “The events in Georgia are of course orchestrated from the outside,” Lavrov told Russia’s Channel One on March 10. ( Eurasianet) - Russia initially maintained indifference toward the recent crisis in Georgia despite being front and center of the brewing strife: The bill that drove the controversy in Georgia was dubbed the “Russian Law.” But when crowds spilled into the streets of Tbilisi with Russia-disparaging slogans, reactions began pouring in from Moscow.Ĭlaiming that the bill was used as a pretext to attempt a coup, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that March 7-8 protests in Tbilisi brought to mind Kyiv Maidan, the 2014 revolution in Ukraine. ![]()
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