MOSCOW, July 15. /TASS/. Georgy Lomiya, leader of the opposition political party ‘Alliance of Patriots of Georgia,’ and Konstantin Kosachev, chair of Russia’s Federation Council foreign affairs committee, looked for solutions to the current crisis in the two countries’ relations at their meeting.
"We discussed some options to resolve the crisis," the lawmaker told reporters on Monday. "We will not be making public any details as those opposing friendly relations with Russia will do their best to derail these plans."
"Of course, we discussed the issue among others," he added when asked whether the resumption of flights was on the table of the talks.
Anti-Russian provocations
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 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 and tried to storm the parliament under anti-Russian slogans.
On July 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree temporarily banning flights (including commercial ones) between Russia to Georgia and back came into force. On the same day, flights by Georgian airlines were suspended over Russia under the June 22 regulation of Russia’s Transport Ministry.