“West must prepare”
Saakashvili believes in Russia’s collapse
03/22/2023 02:26 am
Georgian ex-president Saakashvili assumes that Russia will collapse because of the war in Ukraine. The West must accept this process and prepare for it, says the currently imprisoned pro-Western politician. He also expects changes in Georgia.
In the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, a victory for Kiev is inevitable from the point of view of former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. “Ukraine’s inevitable victory will completely change the situation in Georgia and the region,” said the imprisoned Saakashvili in an interview with the AFP news agency. The West must “accept and prepare for the collapse of the Russian Federation.”
“Ukraine has finally become a superpower in the region and, together with Poland, determines everything in the region, including in relation to Georgia,” said Saakashvili, who has since held official posts in Ukraine. “The situation in Georgia will change fundamentally before Ukraine finally wins,” he said, referring to the recent anti-government protests in Georgia.
The pro-Western reformer Saakashvili spoke of a “European nation with a Russian government” in Georgia. “No autocrat will ever be able to subjugate the generation that grew up in a free Georgia,” he said, referring to ex-Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili. Like the ruling party, the Georgian Dream, he is accused of collaborating with the Kremlin.
Saakashvili is no longer a citizen of Georgia
Saakashvili was President of Georgia from 2004 to 2013. During his tenure, the Caucasus War in 2008 between Tbilisi and Moscow over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in which Georgia was defeated. Since then, Russia has maintained a strong military presence in both regions.
In October 2021, Saakashvili was arrested on charges of abuse of office as he was returning to his homeland after a long exile, mostly in Ukraine. In Ukraine, he was President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s reform commissioner and governor of the Odessa region, among other things.
Because of differences with the Georgian authorities, whom Saakashvili accuses of links to Russia, his Georgian citizenship was revoked. Saakashvili took Ukrainian citizenship. Recently there had been concerns about Saakashvili’s state of health.
Massive protests erupted earlier this month in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia against a proposed law on “foreign agents.” Critics saw parallels in this to a law passed in Russia in 2012 that the Kremlin has since used to take action against the media, organizations critical of the government and other critics. In the face of the protests, the Georgian government finally withdrew the planned law.