MOSCOW, November 27. /TASS/. Air flights between Russia and Georgia may be resumed in the first six months of 2020, a source in the Russian government told Izvestia on Wednesday, noting that the current political crisis in Georgia impedes their restoration by the New Year.
"Most likely, air flights will be resumed after the New Year," the source told the paper.
The source recalled that Russia had suspended air flights with Georgia unilaterally and would also cancel this decision unilaterally. The Georgian Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze confirmed to Izvestia that it was up to Moscow to decide on resuming flights between the two countries, stressing that Georgia "would only welcome it."
"Speaking on air flights, a lot depends whether there is a healthy climate in our bilateral ties. So far, our Georgian partners cannot be proud of this given the news reports coming from there every day, but we will discuss this. We are determined to move forward in this issue. But there should be a moral and political climate and now it would be a mistake to say that it has been created," said Russian Senator Grigory Karasin, a former Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, who is due to meet with Abashidze in Prague on November 28.
Izvestia notes that both Karasin and Abashidze do not directly link the restoration of flights to the ongoing protests in the Georgian capital. According to Karasin, Russia wants "Russian-Georgian relations to be stable regardless of domestic political processes." Georgia is sure that the protests in Tbilisi should not significantly affect tourism.
Protests in Georgia
The Georgian parliament on November 14 refused to support the idea of constitutional changes concerning the 2020 parliamentary elections on the basis of a proportional system with a zero threshold. Most lawmakers from the ruling party that had initiated the bill opposed this idea.
Angry opposition and civil activists took to the streets for a major rally in Tbilisi in front of the parliament building. They put the blame entirely on the leader of the ruling party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had announced transition from the mixed system to proportional in June 2020. Elections under the proportional system was one of the demands the protesters in front of the Georgian parliament have been pressing since June 20. On November 17, the protesters blocked the parliament for the first time. On the following day, riot police used water cannons and tear gas to clear the approaches to the parliament building from the protesters. After the crackdown, the opposition announced another grassroots rally on November 25. Over the past week, demonstrators have been attaching chains and locks to the gates of state buildings.
Russian airlines were temporarily banned from carrying out flights to Georgia starting from July 8, and the flights of Georgian airlines to Russia were suspended. The flight ban came after on June 20 several thousand people staged an anti-Russian rally outside the parliament in Tbilisi.