Parliament Speaker: Russia-Ukraine war must end as soon as possible; peace must prevail, and Ukrainian state must survive
“Today marks four years since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict that has already outlasted the Great Patriotic War in duration, and rivals it in destruction and human suffering,” Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili wrote on social media.
As Papuashvili noted, the front line remains where it stood 80 years ago, and Georgia feels the weight of it just as it did back then, in the 1940s.
“Indeed, as the President of the United States said today, this is a war that should never have been started. And yet we still see forces for whom its continuation is not merely convenient, but necessary. When great powers clash over competing interests, it is always the country whose land becomes the battlefield, and the people who live upon it, that pay the heaviest price.
This war must end as soon as possible. Peace must take hold. The Ukrainian state must survive.
Any new security architecture must be founded, without exception, on the principle of respect for sovereignty and national identity. Georgia held precisely this vision and this conviction from the very first day of the war. Under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, we pursued a policy of peace, even as those who hungered for war sought, through external pressure and internal agitation, to drag Georgia into the ring of fire. We defended our national interests firmly four years ago, and we defend them just as firmly today,” Papuashvili wrote.
He went on to say that at a time when our region once again faces the threat of fresh confrontation, strength, unity, and the defence of sovereign choice are for Georgia not merely a political imperative, but a historical necessity.
“Tragically, the war remains close and continues to threaten thousands more lives. A formula for peace has yet to be found.
We pray for peace and for the people of Ukraine. We wish them endurance and the attainment of lasting peace,” Papuashvili wrote.