Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
After Mikhail Saakashvili lost power, all that remains is to write memoirs. They are going to be quite interesting, considering recent interviews of the former president to Western media. Almost all became sensations. For example, he told BuzzFeed that he personally asked an MP, one of leaders of the United National Movement (UNM), Givi Targamadze, to meet Russian opposition activists. “It’s in his nature. I couldn’t stop him. I made fun of him, calling him Che-Givi-ara,” the former Georgian leader stated, but didn’t mention what “order” was given to Targamadze ahead of a meeting, for example, with Sergey Udaltsov.
At the same time, Saakashvili complained that Targamadze didn’t listen to his warnings that it was impossible to organize a Kiev Maidain in Moscow and overthrow Vladimir Putin by a colour revolution.
It seems Saakashvili dissembles a bit. According to a Russian investigation, Givi Targamadze paid Russian activists a large sum of money. Where could he have got it, except for secret funds controlled by the president? At least, it is naïve to think that Special Services allocated huge sums to Targamadze, and Saakashvili didn’t know about it. Of course he was aware of it, and it wasn’t a personal initiative of Mikhail’s supporter, but a targeted policy on spreading ideas of Velvet Revolution in the post-Soviet space, including Russia.
“The Revolutionaries” understood clearly that the policy was welcomed by powerful circles in the West: the former secretary of the National Security Council of Georgia, Giga Bokeria, stated that activeness in the post-Soviet space boosted Georgia’s importance in the Western eyes. “As the result we got the Eastern Partnership Program and an invitation to associate with the EU,” Bokeria said.
Earlier the president Saakashvili praised Targamadze a lot, proudly saying that he “crossed the Kyrgyz border riding a donkey in 2006 to help democratic forces of the country.” However, he has never mentioned what disastrous consequences followed infinite takeovers and revolutions in the country.
Opponents of the former president think that a result of the policy is turning Georgia into Russia’s main target: “Targamadze is a sick person and it is a sin to use his sickness in adventures,” political scientist Georgy Khukhashvili told Vestnik Kavkaza.
