The President, De-Facto President & Doctor Gaprindashvili
Anatoly Bibilov, the de-facto President of self-professed South Ossetia, remarked on the detainment of Georgian Dr. Vazha Gaprindashvili on Wednesday. The pseudo leader said, in his first official comments on the case, that "imprisonment for one year and nine months is an adequate sentence for the doctor."
“I cannot say that the court's ruling is strict or cruel. A person who breaks the law must be held accountable: when that person deliberately does so, he must be punished. The only thing that is unfortunate is that this situation is being politicized,” Bibilov went on, claiming that Western and Georgian politicians are not responding to the Georgian side's violations of international norms, a statement which can be considered hypocritical in nature, where the biggest violation of the international law is undemocratic hostile separatism from a country and its being a proxy military landmass for Moscow.
“The Georgian authorities have illegally placed their checkpoints on the border and thus violated all norms of the law,” Bibilov claimed.
“In respect to Vazha Gaprindashvili’s case, it is obvious that technical processes yield no results; they carry on sluggishly without sound judgement,” President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili stated the same day.
"With the case of Vazha Gaprindahvili, we are seeing bureaucrats who cannot make the political decisions we expect. Georgia is stuck in this ongoing technical process," the President said.
"We are working with the help of international associations. We have been trying to put the Geneva International Discussions into its initial political format. Days prior to the Normandy Format talks, I reminded the President of France to consider the case of Georgia, namely our present conflict regarding the imprisoned doctor and the never-ending issue of our occupied territories.
"For the first time, during the French-Georgian Dialogue, named after the legendary Georgian officer and national hero of France Dimitri Amilakhvari, France assessed the situation of Georgia in words that have never been used before,” Zurabishvili stated.
On Thursday, the First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs of the State Duma of Russia, Dmitry Novikov, responded to President Zurabishivili’s comment, saying the idea of negotiating the issue of Russian-Georgian relations in the Normandy Format would be "peculiar, even artificial."
“This position seems to me rather odd, because these problems concern two countries only, and two countries should solve them,” Novikov said.
The deputy claims that the “Normandy format,” in relation to the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics, is a “special situation”, while here the issue at hand is bilateral relations between Russia and Georgia. The structure of the problem is thus different and the same format cannot be applied.
The day before, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili offered the initiative in an interview with Channel One of the Georgian public broadcaster. The President stated that current talks with Russia are futile; therefore, it would be pertinent to conduct a dialogue with Moscow in the "Normandy Format". In her view, the multilateral format is better, because Georgia is unable to conduct negotiations alone and needs support.
The so-called “Normandy Format” talks involve the representatives of the Normandy Four countries (Germany, Russia, Ukraine, France) and aim to resolve a war that began after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.
Well-known Georgian Doctor Vazha Gaprindashvili was abducted by Russian-controlled occupational forces on November 9 and was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison, “for deliberately crossing the border”. The Doctor did not admit to “crossing the border,” rightfully and justly saying that Tskhinvali is part of Georgia and which is ‘now’ (temporarily) occupied by Russia.
BY THE GT TEAM
Image source: Tabula.ge