As previously reported, while speaking to students yesterday in his Avlabar residence, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili once again delivered an accusatory speech against Russia and its past, present and future relations with Georgia. The president said that Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008 only thanks to high oil prices, while Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has been bought by the Kremlin for $2 billion. In the previous story on this topic we offered a critical look at the charges and predictions of Saakashvili, and now we offer you the Russian view on the President's speech.
Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of International Studies, MGIMO, Leonid Gusev, said that Saakashvili has been repeating the statements articulated on Sunday for ten years, ever since his coming to power and the Rose Revolution, and otherwise he hasn't said anything new. "Why did he make this statement against Ivanishvili? Ivanishvili is his political opponent, who in the last election received a significant number of votes. All the statements about money received are, to say the least, strange, because Ivanishvili is a billionaire and has a considerable fortune, much of which he spent on the last parliamentary campaign. Therefore, I believe that this kind of rhetoric is directed against his political opponent," Gusev said, adding that it is quite understandable if you look at the confrontation between the pro-presidential "United National Movement" and the coalition "Georgian Dream", which controls almost everything in Georgia.
Head of the Sector for Caucasian Studies of the RISS, Yana Amelina, put it more bluntly: "This is a raving lunatic, from whom we have been hearing for far too long and it is becoming tiresome. It is quite monotonous and constantly repeated. And the most important thing is that these things cannot be proved, neither by him, nor anyone else. And we have to take these things for granted. Why $2 billion, why not $2.5 billion or $1.8 billion, for example? What concessions did Bidzina make? It's all nonsense," Amelina said.
