Ex-President Saakashvili: I did not abandon our people; we stood up for Georgia and denied Russia its strategic goals

“Why are the Georgian Dreamers and their Russian masters bursting with bile regarding August 2008? They simply can’t forgive me for refusing to abandon Georgia when Putin and Sarkozy demanded it, and the Americans offered it,” wrote former President Mikheil Saakashvili on social media.

According to him, in 2008 he chose not to desert his people in their hour of trial for the sake of saving himself.

“I rallied the whole of Georgia and the entire democratic world, saving our nation by ensuring that Russia failed to achieve a single strategic objective in that 2008 war. Instead, we pressed ahead with grand nation-building and some of the world’s most successful reforms.

To this day, they remain bitterly furious, dismissing our Alvani hero, Giorgi Antsukhelidze, as a mere ‘PR creation’ simply because he refused to bow his head, refused to kiss the occupier’s boots, refused to curse his Commander-in-Chief, and unhesitatingly laid down his life for Georgia. A ‘Dreamer’ who willingly crawls before an occupier is hysterically terrified of such unbroken individuals, which is precisely why they wage war against Giorgi’s memory.

They cannot forgive the Georgian army for buying us crucial days in a completely unequal fight until the world intervened. That is why they strive to neuter the Georgian armed forces, to crush their fighting spirit, and why they destroyed Georgian military production. And finally, they cannot forgive the Georgian nation for uniting as a single fist at that decisive moment, setting aside our differences, and standing as one before our enemy and the world.

This is precisely why, for 14 years, they have been taking merciless revenge on Georgians, stripping away their freedom, humiliating them, oppressing them, hounding them out of the country to settle Russians and others in their place, and besmirching our name across the globe. They have sold an entire country into the personal slavery and possession of a single unworthy traitor. Yet no matter how many centuries pass, future generations of Georgians will remember that we defended our dignity and freedom, that we struck back against a ruthless empire, convinced the world that we were worthy of support, implemented unprecedented reforms on an international scale, stood back up after a devastating blow, sustained rapid development, and created the precedent of a highly successful Georgia.

Antsukhelidze and the heroes of Shindisi have gone; I will pass, and so will today’s generations. But the idea of an eternal Georgia will live on through all its changes: a fiercely brave and talented nation that stands up every single time when least expected, winning against all hope. Glory to the heroes! Glory to eternal Georgia!” wrote Mikheil Saakashvili.