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Georgian president yet undecided on taking part in Victory Day celebrations in Moscow

Salome Zourabichvili plans to discuss this issue in early 2020 during her official visit to Ukraine with President Vladimir Zelensky

Salome Zurabishvili Mikhail Japaridze/TASS

Salome Zurabishvili

© Mikhail Japaridze/TASS

TBILISI, December 25. /TASS/. Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has not decided on taking part in the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow and plans to discuss this issue in early 2020 during her official visit to Ukraine with President Vladimir Zelensky.

"No doubt, we will discuss this and also many other issues in Ukraine. Now I cannot directly answer this question," Zourabichvili said in an interview with the First Channel of the Georgian Public Broadcasting.

When asked whether Georgian representatives should come to Russia to mark the 75th anniversary of Victory in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War, she said: "I can say only one thing: if any country has a full moral right to celebrate and more exactly to remember the victims on May 9, then this is Georgia. Our role and victims in this war were huge compared with others."

Russian President Vladimir Putin told his annual news conference on December 19 that representatives of former Soviet states who decide not to attend the Victory Day celebrations on May 9 would make a mistake and show their disrespect to war veterans.

Tbilisi severed diplomatic relations with Moscow in 2008 after Russia had recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The only direct dialogue between officials from the two countries was a format stipulating holding regular meetings between Special Representative of Georgia’s Prime Minister for Relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze and member of the Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Grigory Karasin.

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