“The European Union is not using all its capacities, is passive, and is waiting for us to overcome these challenges or fail to overcome,” former President of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, declared in her speech at the Warsaw Security Forum.

She also pointed out that Russia is acutely aware of psychological warfare and employs it against neighbouring countries.

“The head of Russia is old or not old, they’re always active, KGB man. So, he knows this psychological warfare, and he’s using it. For us, outside, we are looking at what the European Union, this huge power, could do.

We have the impression that the European Union is not using all its capacities, is passive, and is waiting for us to overcome these challenges or fail. In the case of Georgia, we were not able to overcome this because I, as the president, did not have the executive powers to use the services and the information to make it possible for the diaspora to vote. I’m very glad that Maya Sandu could use to defend the votes of the Moldovan people,” Salome Zourabichvili has stated.

Furthermore, in her speech, the former President Zourabichvili emphasised the strategic significance of the Black Sea region for the European Union and highlighted that Europe’s strength increasingly relies on its expansion.

“EU enlargement is not just about integrating new members, it’s about defending the European model. A model of democracy, of self-determination and the only and unique model of that type of cultural organisation that has been willingly chosen by all the countries that form the European Union today, or that will form the European Union.

A stronger Europe depends on enlargement that includes a new security and defence policy, economy, connectivity with neighbours, partners, and regions that are vital to the future. In that sense, the Black Sea is a vital part of the enlargement. It’s no coincidence that Russia, which may have understood that earlier, because it was part of its old post-Soviet space or preso-space, and that’s the Black Sea, which is now a strategic region for the European Union, for NATO, which has designed a new strategy for the Black Sea Security and the European Union also. So, it’s no coincidence that Moscow has targeted all the countries that are vital for these strategies of the Black Sea for cooperation, connectivity and security,” Salome Zourabichvili has stated.

Additionally, the former President of Georgia responded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent statement, in which he claimed that Europe has lost Georgia.

“There has not been a clear voice as a collective voice of the European Union on seeing what is happening. I disagree, a little bit, with President Zelenskyy, who said that Georgia was lost to Russia; he overdid it a little bit because I think that we are still not lost. We are still fighting. We are still on the streets. I am on the streets.

But we need more support, more time, more active attention to what is happening and the European Union should use all the capacity that it has as it’s using to support Ukraine, militarily, and should do more in our case to support us politically. And if that means that the European Union has to come to terms with its internal problems and internal decision-making, that’s something that we expect the European Union to be able to do. We believe in our coming European future,” Salome Zourabichvili has stated.