TBILISI, Georgia — Direct flights resumed on Friday between Russia and Georgia amid protests and sharp criticism from the South Caucasus nation’s president, simply over every week after the Kremlin unexpectedly lifted a four-year-old ban regardless of rocky relations.
Georgian police on Friday afternoon dispersed protesters who had gathered at Tbilisi airport to fulfill an Azimuth Airlines flight from Moscow, the primary to reach from Russia since July 2019, with indicators and slogans criticizing the Kremlin and what they described as the present Georgian authorities’s pro-Russia course.
Georgia’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, who has beforehand clashed with the federal government over mending ties with Moscow, additionally voiced her opposition in a tweet posted on Friday.
“Despite the opposition of the Georgian people, Russia has landed its unwelcome flight in Tbilisi. No to flights to Russia!,” Zourabichvili mentioned.
Russian President Vladimir Putin final Wednesday unexpectedly abolished visas for Georgian nationals and lifted the flight ban Moscow unilaterally imposed in 2019 after a wave of anti-Kremlin protests in Georgia.
Putin’s decrees got here a day after leaders of a number of Central Asian and South Caucasus states stood beside him at a army parade marking the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II, in what appeared just like the Kremlin searching for to indicate that Russia nonetheless had allies and wasn’t utterly remoted.
Following Putin’s decrees, Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued an announcement lifting its 2019 suggestion for Russian residents to keep away from touring to Georgia.
Russia-Georgia relations have been difficult for the reason that Soviet Union’s collapse within the early Nineties. The two international locations fought a brief struggle in 2008 that ended with Georgia dropping management of two Russia-friendly separatist areas.
In the aftermath, Tbilisi severed diplomatic ties with Moscow, and the problem of the areas’ standing stays a key irritant, at the same time as relations have considerably improved.
After Russia invaded Ukraine final 12 months, Georgia joined worldwide resolutions condemning the struggle, offered Kyiv with humanitarian support and took in hundreds of refugees. However, its authorities stopped wanting supplying Ukraine with weapons, citing the necessity to keep neutrality.
At the identical time, the Black Sea nation of three.7 million individuals turned one of many foremost locations for Russians fleeing the crackdown and the partial mobilization into the army that Putin introduced in September 2022.
Zourabichvili final week responded to Putin’s decrees with a tweet calling them “another Russian provocation.”
“Resuming direct flights and lifting visa ban with Georgia is unacceptable as long as Russia continues its aggression on Ukraine and occupies our territory!,” she mentioned.
Opposition lawmaker Giorgi Vashadze instructed reporters that Georgia’s pro-Western political events deliberate to carry a rally outdoors the parliament constructing on Friday night.
“The current authorities want rapprochement with Russia, but the population is against this and is committed to the Euro-Atlantic course,” Vashadze mentioned, referencing Tbilisi’s stalled European Union membership bid and decades-long aspirations to affix NATO.
By distinction, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili on Friday mentioned at a media briefing that restoring direct flights from Russia was the best factor to do. Garibashvili burdened that Tbilisi wouldn’t enable flights by Russian airways sanctioned by the West, however mentioned that stopping commerce and financial relations with Moscow would “harm the interests of the Georgian people.”
The Georgian aviation authority this week approved two smaller Russian airways, Azimuth Airlines and Red Wings, to launch flights to Tbilisi and Georgia’s second metropolis of Kutaisi.
Vazha Siradze, a Georgian inside ministry official, mentioned in an announcement Friday that six individuals had been detained in the course of the demonstration at Tbilisi airport after allegedly throwing eggs and shouting insults at police.
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