Minister: Russia Behind Anti-Georgian Campaign in Western Media
Russia has allocated “huge amount of money” to carry out an anti-Georgian campaign in the western media, Temur Iakobashvili, the Georgian state minister for reintegration, said on November 12.
In particular, he said that some of the western media sources were reporting citing, as he put it, “a suspicious sources” like former OSCE military observer, Ryan Grist, who at that time worked for the OSCE Mission in Georgia, that Georgian villages were not shelled on August 7 before the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali.
Iakobashvili said that not only Russia started to spend money on anti-Georgian media campaign, but it was also “resorting to KGB methods, including intimidation and blackmail.”
“We cannot blame anybody for taking a bribe or being a Russian agent; probably, it is up to a reader to judge about it rather than up to the authorities,” Iakobashvili said. “Time has come to say openly that this is part of the planned media campaign.
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