MOSCOW, June 24. /TASS/. Western nations are ignoring the eruptions of nationalism and anti-Russian xenophobia in Georgia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a meeting with the heads of Russian regional non-profit organizations on Monday.
"Western sponsors are ready to turn a blind eye to the violent riots by nationalists and their Russophobia, just to sever all ties of the Georgian people with our country and rewrite our common history," Lavrov said.
"We have taken an unbiased look at the role of the US and its allies on the international arena," he noted.
However, Russia is neither fencing itself off from anyone, nor is it isolating itself nor refraining from dialogue on those issues aimed at ironing out problems that the world is facing such as terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime or the dangers of weapons of mass destruction proliferating, Lavrov noted.
On June 20, anti-Russian riots broke out in downtown Tbilisi. The pretext for the unrest was attributed to a session of the General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO), which was held in the Georgian parliament. In line with the protocol, the Russian delegation’s head, State Duma MP Sergei Gavrilov, who is the IAO President, addressed the delegates from the seat of the parliament speaker. Media reports claimed that Gavrilov had allegedly participated in combat actions in Abkhazia and Transnistria, although he dismissed this as fake news. In protest, the opposition disrupted the event and staged a rally, which culminated in an attempt to storm the parliament’s building. During the riots, some 240 people were hurt and over 300 others were detained.