Georgian PM, President of Ukraine Hold Telephone Conversation

Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia talked to President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky over the phone this weekend.

During the conversation, the Georgian Prime Minister said he shared the pain over the loss of Ukrainian citizens in the UIA plane crash in the Iranian city of Tehran, and expressed condolences to the relatives of the victims of the tragedy.

Giorgi Gakharia assured the President that Georgia was ready to provide all the necessary assistance to Ukraine.

Zelensky in turn stressed that the key thing was to conduct a full and objective investigation into the causes of the tragedy, and Ukrainian experts were already involved in this process.

"We feel your support," he said. "Ukraine and Georgia have always been side-by-side in the troubled periods of history. We have experts working, we have already sent a plane with our best specialists to Iran and we are working to ensure the transparency of the investigation,” the Head of State said.

The Ukrainian International airliner bound for the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, crashed minutes after takeoff from the Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran on January 8 amid escalating tensions between the United States and Iran. 

The plane carried mostly Iranians and Iranian Canadians.

On the evening of January 10, Iran’s military announced that they had accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, blaming human error because the plane took ‘an unexpected turn’ toward a military base.

By Ana Dumbadze 

Related Story: Iran: We Unintentionally Shot Down the Ukrainian Plane