Russian Press on Lavrov’s Visit

Visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Georgia tops front-pages of the Russian press on February 18. According to the Russian press there is little hope that this visit will bring a breakthrough in strained relations of Georgia and Russia.

Particularly the Russian press focuses on the diplomatic row, which preceded the visit, when the Georgian side downgraded the visit from the official to working one, after Sergey Lavrov refused to lay a wreath at the memorial of Georgia’s fallen soldiers, who died in the fight for Georgia’s territorial integrity.

“Everything went wrong even before Sergey Lavrov’s plane took off from Yerevan late on Thursday. Firstly, it turned out that the visit, which was initially announced as an official, and even was described as a landmark visit, was downgraded as working one at the last moment,” the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.

The Izvestia daily described Georgia’s decision to downgrade the status of visit as the Georgian government’s “PR action” for the internal consumption, which “failed to deliver its goal: Sergey Lavrov did not turned his plane and arrived in Tbilisi anyway.”

The daily Izvestia quotes unnamed source in the Russian delegation, who says that “either Tbilisi’s weak position at the negotiations, or [Tbilisi’s] unprepared position to solve the problems [persisting in bilateral relations], was probably behind this noisy campaign in Tbilisi ahead of Lavrov’s visit.”

The daily Kommersant described developments ahead of Lavrov’s visit as “a huge diplomatic scandal.” “Situation ahead of the visit looked very gloomy. There are no reasons to think that Tbilisi and Moscow will be able to negotiate over any issue,” the paper says.

The Russian state-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta says that the Georgian side stirred “scandal shortly before the visit.” “Yesterday [February 17] a group of those veterans who fought war in Abkhazia and South Ossetia organized a protest rally outside the Russian Embassy in Tbilisi and placed wreath near the Embassy to symbolize, as they put it, “Death of the Russian Diplomacy.”

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