MP Samkharadze: If you view your fellow citizens’ plight as less tragic than Ukrainian’s, you have no right to preach morality

“The United National Movement’s supposed Russophobia is a total fiction; they are not anti-Russian in any way,” MP Nikoloz Samkharadze, Chairman of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, told GPB First Channel.

According to Samkharadze, during their time in power, the UNM did everything possible to advance Russian interests in Georgia.

“This is proven by the fact that they sold strategic assets to Russian companies. Shortly after the 2008 war, they unilaterally abolished visa requirements for Russian citizens, with high-ranking officials personally greeting Russian tourists at the Larsi border crossing. They had numerous representatives who worked in Russia, as well as figures from the cultural sphere who performed and sang in Russia, and all of this took place after 2008. Therefore, their current propaganda is cheap and low-grade, because no one forgets how they acted before Russia invaded Ukraine.

It is an even greater disgrace if you only became a fierce critic of Russia after it invaded Ukraine, while completely disregarding the fact that Russia was occupying Georgian territories and had ethnically cleansed Georgians from Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region. If you view the hardship of your own fellow citizens as a lesser tragedy than that of a Ukrainian, then you have no right to preach about morality and ethics,” Samkharadze stated.