TBILISI, February 28. /TASS/. Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili has revealed that former US Ambassador to Tbilisi Kelly Degnan demanded at a meeting with him on February 28, 2022 that the republic’s authorities impose sanctions on Russia.

"She stated that this was our moment to decide ‘whether we are on the side of good or evil,’ which, in her view, meant joining sanctions against Russia. The ambassador was firm and clear in her demand, and her special assistant was making detailed notes of my responses," he wrote on Facebook (banned in Russia; owned by Meta designated as extremist in Russia).

According to the speaker, he responded to the ambassador’s demand by saying that Georgia had not been consulted on the sanctions, was unaware of their full implications, and could not predict the consequences of joining them. He clarified that Georgia is not under NATO’s nuclear umbrella nor the EU’s economic one. "The US envoy was adamant and unyielding. The only response she wanted to hear was an agreement to introduce sanctions. Each time, she would come back to me with a question about whether we were going to join the sanctions, and after each refusal, she would harshly signal to the assistant that this should be displayed in the notes," Papuashvili said.

The speaker also pointed out to the ambassador that Ukraine needs military aid, not sanctions, and that Zelensky demanded Georgia send troops to Ukraine. Papuashvili asked Degnan: "Maybe the US should consider doing that?" To which the diplomat retorted: "Do you want a nuclear war to break out?" The parliament speaker countered this argument by saying that the United States itself acted cautiously, while saying that Georgia was being over-cautious. The situation escalating and a possible conflict would be equivalent to a nuclear war for Georgia, he said.

Papuashvili mentioned this conversation when speaking to James O’Brien, the US Assistant Secretary of State at the time, who came to Georgia last spring. "I had just one question for him: is this what strategic partners should do? The only justification I heard from him was that all ambassadors were then instructed to get other countries to jump on the anti-Russian bandwagon post haste," Papuashvili wrote. When asked what would have happened if Georgia had followed the envoy’s instructions in 2022 with no guarantees given, O’Brien didn’t say a word.

On February 25, 2022, Irakli Garibashvili, Georgia’s prime minister at the time, announced that he had no intention of imposing sanctions on Russia, affirming that this stance aligned with Georgia’s national interests. In early March of the same year, Vladimir Zelensky recalled the Ukrainian ambassador from Tbilisi due to the Georgian authorities’ position on sanctions.