“If we make judgments based on the performance of the countries or the nations, we, I don’t want to compare ourselves to Moldova or Ukraine, but we are ahead of Ukraine and Moldova two, three times,” Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili stated at the panel discussion of the Third annual Economic Forum in Qatar.

According to Irakli Garibashvili, Europe has to make a merit-based decision taking into account Georgia’s “extremely difficult” geo-political situation and ongoing occupation.

The Georgian Prime Minister also stressed that amid the full-scale aggression of Russia against Ukraine, Georgia maintained peace and stability.

Garibashvili noted that as a head of the government, his top “job and duty” was to protect the national interests of Georgia and the Georgian people.

“So if we make judgments based on the performance of the countries or the nations, we, I don’t want to compare ourselves to Moldova or Ukraine, but we are ahead of Ukraine and Moldova two, three times if we’re talking about the merit-based approach.

And if we’re talking about the performance, now Georgia is extremely in a difficult situation, right? Because of our geography, because of the ongoing occupation. Again, 20% of our territory is occupied. So, let me ask you then, what else could Georgia do to support Ukraine, the Ukrainian people?

I didn’t want to talk about this, but maybe the Ukrainian friends had different expectations from us. They publicly, I have to say it, said that they want to see a second front in Georgia.

We’ve had enough wars after Georgia regained independence. In the nineties we had two wars, we had civil war, then we had a war in 2008 with Russia. A small nation with 4 million population and 40,000 troops had a direct with Russia. What we’re doing is that we have maintained, and secured peace and stability. This is the most important thing, and my job and my duty, is to protect the national interests of my country, is to protect our people,” he said.