Saakashvili: Lavrova must be hired by a travel agent

The recommendations of the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry Sergei Lavrov about the need to refrain from traveling to Georgia only contribute to the influx of Russian tourists to the country. According to the Voice of America, this was stated by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. "Now all hotels are filled with tourists from Russia. The more Lavrov says so that they do not go, the more people arrive. Can it take Lavrov by a travel agent?" - said Saakashvili.

“All planes are crowded with Russians, and everyone saw his statement, and even more people are going here with great pleasure. Watch Lavrov’s salary of the travel agent, he makes a very good advertisement for Georgia,” Saakashvili said, addressing the Minister of Education.

He also noted that "hundreds of millions of dollars annually stand out so that the world will hate Georgia." “We expect this year to come to a million Russian tourists, they can tell the truth about Georgia. Then no one can convince them that the Georgians of the cannibals,” the news-group agency quotes Saakashvili.

At the end of February, Georgia unilaterally abolished the visa regime for Russian citizens. All arrivals from Russia no longer pass passport control and do not receive visas - they used to do this either in Moscow, at the Switzerland embassy, ​​or at the Tbilisi Airport.

In Russia, the decision of the Georgian side was criticized. "This initiative is an exclusively propaganda action designed to give an impression outside Georgia that the Saakashvili policy against Russia is a policy against its authorities, not citizens," said Konstantin Kosachev, the first deputy chairman of the International State Duma Committee. Mikhail Saakashvili proposed unilaterally abolish the visa regime with Russia. The initiative of the president with whom he performed in parliament was met by applause. Representing the annual report, Saakashvili said that Georgia is welcoming economic relations with Russia and is open to Russian businessmen. "We never closed Georgia for Russian investors and tourists - we are waiting for several hundred thousand this year. Where the business is active, there is no place for tanks," Saakashvili said.

“Russian citizens should know that they can come to Georgia at any time, and here no one will stop Russian tourists from drinking Georgian wine and Borjomi that they miss,” Saakashvili added.

“We will continue active work for the general Caucasian development and will always be active in friendship with the Caucasian peoples,” Saakashvili said. “Georgia firmly supports the principle of irregularity of state borders, but we consider the Caucasus as a single region where the atmosphere of peace, development and freedom should be.”

According to him, Georgia represents a model of modern statehood in the Caucasus and is not only the "locomotive of the Caucasus to the future", but also the "window to Europe." “Georgia will have free trade with America, the European Union, we will introduce a visa -free regime with Europe, reach the railway there,” Saakashvili promised. “We will create this for the whole Caucasus and every Caucasian, our state will become an example of modern development.”

Since October 2010, Georgia introduced a 90-day visa-free regime for residents of the North Caucasian republics of Russia. This decision caused indignation in Moscow. Russia called the decision of the Georgian authorities a provocation, accusing Tbilisi of striving to destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus. “The very attempt to divide the population of Russia into different categories contradicts the norms of civilized interstate communication,” said the Russian Foreign Ministry.

On February 22, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Russia hopes to restore friendly relations with the Georgian people. "We never identified the Georgian leadership and the Georgian people. And I really expect that this truly fraternal people finally realize for us that Russia is not an enemy, but a friend, and relations will recover," Putin said.

On January 26, a press secretary of the President of the country Mikhail Saakashvili Manana Manzhgaladze said that Georgia would restore diplomatic relations with Russia only after the “de-Kommelion of Georgian territory” and the liquidation of Moscow embassies in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali. Thus, she commented on the statement of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about reconciliation. Manzhgalaladze recalled that the gap of diplomatic relations with Russia in September 2008 was a response to the invasion of the Russian army to the territory of Georgia and the occupation of 20 percent of the country's territory - the "Abkhaz and Tskhinvalsky regions". She also noted that the problem in Russian-Georgian relations is not in Mikhail Saakashvili, but in the fact that Moscow is not considered international recognized boundaries of Georgia.