TBILISI, November 1. /TASS/. Georgian Special Presidential Representative for Settlement of Relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze said that in late November, he would discuss the temporary flight ban between Russia and Georgia with former Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin, who now serves as senator.
"I can confirm that in Prague, Grigory Borisovich [Karasin] and I usually discuss transport issues, including aviation. So it is likely that at the next meeting in late November, we will consider the situation related to the temporary flight ban," Abashidze told TASS.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova informed earlier on Friday that Grigory Karasin would continue taking part in talks with Zurab Abashidze. "According to the Russian leadership’s decision, Karasin will continue taking part in this format. Another meeting in Prague, the 23rd one, is preliminarily scheduled for the end of November," Zakharova said. The diplomat noted that the talks between Karasin and Abashidze have played a vital role in normalizing Russian-Georgian ties. "We don’t have official diplomatic relations, but we have humanitarian and technical contacts. People are more often visiting each other," she added.
Last time, Abashidze met with Karasin in Prague on June 13. The two countries still have to iron out some issues following the August 2008 events. The priority is to restore diplomatic ties and cancel visa requirements for Georgia, which were introduced in 2000. The Abashidze-Karasin talks were launched in 2012, after the coalition headed by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili came to power in Georgia.
Ban on direct flights to Georgia
On June 20, 2019, 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 it. 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. Shortly after the turmoil 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. On June 22, Russia’s Transport Ministry announced that as of July 8, flights by Georgian airlines to Russia are halted.