27 April 2024,   04:28
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Russia can intimidate countries, but it does not mean that it can change their orientation - Salome Zourabichvili

The President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili told CNN’s Jake Tapper that she doesn’t believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is only aiming to take select regions of Ukraine, but that he’s “destroying the whole country”.

“It doesn’t look anymore that he’s just aiming at annexing a few regions. It now looks that he’s destroying the whole country. It"s a war of mass destruction in a way”, - Zourabichvili said.

She added, “I heard his declarations today that all of that is moving according to plans, I’m not so sure that it"s according to plans... He was not planning on the way Ukraine is resisting. He had a mass assault that was very psychological with his forces that were used from all sides. And it has not worked. Of course militarily, he has superiority, which one day or the other will manifest itself. But the determination and the resistance of the Ukrainian people and leadership is really very admirable...

Russia’s attention has already been drawn to Georgia once. This has happened historically very often. Of course, we are always careful, always concerned, because we have an occupation line. 20% of Georgia’s territory is occupied by two large military bases in these two regions, which can move at any time. But this does not mean that Georgia has changed its course of Euro-Atlantic integration.

Today we applied for EU membership, as did Moldova and Ukraine yesterday. This means that the three countries - the Associated Trio are following the same path. So Russia can intimidate countries, but it does not mean that it can change their orientation, the decision of the nation to maintain independence and sovereignty, to choose the allies or organizations with which you want to integrate”, - said Salome Zourabichvili.

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