President Mikheil Saakashvili said in his televised statement on February 21 that despite recent provocations from Russia, Georgia should keep calm and “totally ignore any kind of rhetoric, threat and provocation.”
This statement, made by President Saakashvili at a session of the National Security Council, comes after a reported violation of the Georgian airspace by two Russian Su-25 “Frogfoot” jets and a military helicopter on February 21. Earlier Tuesday, Russia announced that it will stop issuing visas to the Georgian citizens.
President Saakashvili also said that Russia’s announcement on February 21 that it postpones Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli’s visit to Moscow, planned for February 26, “was another inadequate step” by Moscow.
“The Russian authorities told us several times that they would lift visa requirements for Georgia… Instead, a draconian visa restriction regime and an uncivilized restriction of movement of people is now taking place,” President Saakashvili stated.
“Against the background of the strange maneuvers of the Russian 58th Army in the North Caucasus, multiple violations of the Georgian airspace took place today by planes and a helicopter of the Russian Air Forces. You remember that a year and a half ago, when similar violations [of airspace] were reported, Russian Defense Minister [Sergey Ivanov] told us in a challenging manner: ‘show us evidence proving a violation of your airspace.’ They [the Russian side] were telling us this because they knew that we had no air control system equipment,” Saakashvili said.
“But today Georgia has the most modern [air control] system and now here I have absolutely confirmed evidence which we have immediately received [after the airspace violation took place] from our air controllers. This evidence exactly indicates from which airport these planes took off, what type of planes they were – there were two planes and one helicopter – and the exact route of their flight,” he added.
But he said that Georgia’s ability to track the cases of air violation does not mean that “we are going to take unilateral actions.”
“I think that all these provocations aim at frightening us… We are not afraid of anything and we are not going to get anxious. We should continue our course… We are ready to solve all our issues with Russia through cooperation, negotiations and constructive dialogue, based on principles of Georgia’s territorial integrity and independence,” Saakashvili stated.
“We have all the possibilities to prevent any kind of incident, disorder, escalation, tensions, aggravation of situation. We will not yield to these [provocations]. We are calm and we know what we are doing, we know what our course is,” the Georgian President said.
He said that Russia is “a huge state” and these kinds of provocations “are very unserious for a huge country’s policy.”
“We are ready to have normal relations with this huge country based on equality and mutual respect. I think that our reaction should be only preserving calm and totally disregard to any kind of [inflammatory] rhetoric, threat and provocation,” Saakashvili stated
He also hailed a statement by the EU’s Austrian presidency, which notes “the need to increase the effectiveness of the negotiating mechanisms” and says the effectiveness of the Joint Control Commission (JCC) has to be measured by the degree of implementation of the previous agreements, especially on demilitarization.
