TBILISI, July 3. /TASS/. The circumstances that have unfolded after the June 20 turmoil in Tbilisi are unfavorable for both sides, so Georgian and Russian officials must find a way out of it, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told Georgia’s Imedi television on Wednesday ahead of the Geneva talks on security and stability in the South Caucasus.
"We came here (to Geneva - TASS) not to escalate the situation but to exchange views on many issues, look at the state of affairs and discuss the document on the non-use of force. We will try to understand each other better in order to find a way out of this unfavorable situation that has evolved after June 20-21. It is undesirable for our relations, and we need to overcome that," he stressed.
Karasin described the developments in Georgia that took place after June 20 as the country’s domestic issue, which should not result in anti-Russian sentiment.
"This is Georgia’s domestic issue. The political struggle is going on, the elections are approaching. We are perfectly aware of that. However, we do not want this to happen amid anti-Russian tensions. We should prevent that somehow," he pointed out.
Upheaval in Georgia
On June 20, several thousand protesters amassed near the national parliament in downtown Tbilisi, demanding the resignation of the interior minister and the parliament’s speaker, and tried to storm the building. The protests were sparked by an uproar over the Russian delegation’s participation in the 26th session of the Inter-parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO). On June 20, IAO President Sergei Gavrilov opened the session in the Georgian parliament. Opposition lawmakers were outraged by the fact that Gavrilov addressed the event’s participants from the parliament speaker’s seat. In protest, they did not allow the IAO session to continue.
On June 21, Georgian Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze tendered his resignation amid protests. The ruling party accepted some opposition’s demands, including on holding parliamentary polls in 2020 under a proportional system with a zero threshold.
Shortly after the riots in Tbilisi, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili branded Russia an enemy and an occupier on her Facebook page, but later on said that nothing threatened Russian tourists in the country.
To ensure Russian citizens’ safety, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree, which imposed a temporary ban on passenger flights to Georgia from July 8.