Saakashvili: Russian ‘Dying Empire Dreaming’ Of Occupying Georgia

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(Civil.Ge) — Russia is still “dreaming” about taking over Georgia like the Bolshevik Red Army did it on February 25 ninety years ago, President Saakashvili said.

He was speaking in the Museum of Occupation in Tbilisi before students from school of cadets, marking the day when the Bolshevik’s Red Army took over Tbilisi in 1921. Last July, the Georgian Parliament declared February 25 as the Day of Soviet Occupation.

Georgia
Georgia

“Significant parts of Georgia are still occupied,” Saakashvili said. “The same empire, which carried out February 25 of 1921, is dreaming about abolishing Georgia’s sovereignty; how to repeat the February 25 is still discussed in those same rooms, where that tragic day [February 25, 1921] was planned. I remember that during our first meeting Putin proudly told me he was sitting in Stalin’s room in the Kremlin.”

“The only difference is that at that time [in 1921] this empire was being born and now it is dying and is on the stage of waning; at that time it was starting moving towards the world domination and on this road Georgia was one small obstacle… now it has lost influence; its positions are weakening on daily basis and Georgia is its last chance to maintain its positions or at least some sort of illusive status of empire. So now we have to be especially careful and mobilized,” Saakashvili said.

He said that Georgia’s major achievement of recent years was establishment of statehood with a political class for which Georgia was no longer regarded as a province of any empire. He also said that in 1990s Georgia would have avoided all those “traps”, which Russia placed, if the country had the same political class.

“Today we have the state, state institutions, citizens realize responsibility before the state and the state fulfills its major commitments towards its citizens. That’s our major achievement, which makes it impossible to reverse the history and to repeat the February 25 of 1921,” Saakashvili said.

Civil.Ge

Civil Georgia is a daily news online service devoted to delivering quality news and analysis about Georgia. Civil.Ge is run by The UN Association of Georgia, a Georgian non-governmental organization, in frames of ‘National Integration and Tolerance in Georgia’ Program financed by USAID. Civil Georgia is also supported by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

One thought on “Saakashvili: Russian ‘Dying Empire Dreaming’ Of Occupying Georgia

  • February 28, 2011 at 6:43 pm
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    i’m curious if he had the same red tie he was eating 3 years ago, when he said this?

    Reply

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