On War Anniversary Georgian Leaders Speak of Reconciliation, Peaceful Reunification

On the eighth anniversary of the August 2008 war, PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili said “peaceful reunification has no alternative” and Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili said that Russia will “never get away with injustice it has committed” against Georgia eight years ago.

The PM, accompanied by government members, and then the President visited on Monday military cemetery at Mukhatgverdi in Tbilisi outskirts to pay tribute to Georgian soldiers fallen in the August, 2008 war.

PM Kvirikashvili told journalists after a wreath laying ceremony that “peace has no alternative.” 

“Eight years have passed since the most tragic events in Georgia’s recent history. Although the war lasted for only several days, our country suffered a huge blow. I pay tribute to the memory of all those hero soldiers who fell in this cruel, unequal battle for homeland. As a result of Russian occupation our citizens were displaced from [their homes]. As a result of this war we distanced even more from Abkhazians and Ossetians,” PM Kvirikashvili said.

“Georgia’s peaceful reunification has no alternative. We should continue our consistent policy. Reconciliation process has a huge importance, which is being implemented by the state step-by-step. We should make our country attractive and interesting for everyone. We should reunite our country through engagement of the international community. Peace has no alternative and the state is doing and will do everything in order for the bloodshed to never reoccur again,” he said.

President Margvelashvili told journalists: “One thing is real – Russia will never get away with injustice it has committed against its neighboring nation. This black stain on [Russia] – occupation and then recognition of so called ‘independent states’ [Abkhazia and South Ossetia] on the territory of Georgia, will be a problem that Russia will always face.”

“We will reunite Georgia not with war, but with reconciliation,” the President said.

“But there will always be [a question] on which Russia has to give an answer – how it made such a bloody step against its neighboring small nation and how can a nuclear power inflict such a pain and tragedy to its neighbor and then create and recognize these some kind of quasi-states. We will definitely reunite Georgia,” President Margvelashvili said.

Parliament Speaker Davit Usupashvili of the Republican Party, ruling GDDG party’s former partner party in the coalition government, told journalists at the Mukhatgverdi military cemetery that the international community is still not ready to give appropriate response to Russia’s aggression.

He also said that “more robust and clear steps” should be taken in order to make Georgia better protected and “not to have any more a sense that we may again be alone” in the face of aggression.

“That’s why it is necessary to integrate into NATO,” Usupashvili said. “We won’t be able and we will not return lost territories with use of military force and with NATO. But we won’t be able to defend rest of Georgia without NATO and our allies.”