More than 3,000 people took to the streets in Georgia on Saturday to protest what they called Moscow’s occupation of the breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions.
Carrying placards that read “Stop Russia!” and chanting “Georgia,” protesters gathered outside the State Chancellery building in the capital, Tbilisi.
“The Kremlin continues to use both hard and soft power in its efforts to subjugate Georgia,” one of the protest’s organizers, Tamara Chergoleishvili, told reporters.
Photo: Reuters
“We gathered here to show that Russia’s aggressive policy doesn’t belong to the 21st century,” she added.
“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin must know that we will never accept Russian occupation,” 21-year-old protester Elene Gerliani said. “Today’s rally is part of our fight for freedom.”
On Tuesday last week, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Russia of moving border markers further into Tbilisi-controlled area near the Kremlin-backed separatist region of South Ossetia.
The shift left a portion of the Baku-Supsa Pipeline, which transports Caspian oil destined for Western markets, under effective Russian control.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said through a spokesperson that the move “had led to tension in the area.”
“Steps that could be perceived as provocative must be avoided,” she said.
Russian troops have been installing barbed wire around South Ossetia since Tbilisi’s defeat in the brief 2008 Russia-Georgia war over control of the Moscow-backed separatist region.
After the war, Moscow recognized South Ossetia — along with the separatist enclave Abkhazia — as independent states and stationed thousands of troops in the regions that make up about 20 percent of Georgian territory.
The breakaway regions, whose self-proclaimed independence has been recognized by only a handful of countries, are heavily dependent on Russia for military and financial assistance.
The Baku-Supsa Pipeline, also known as the Western Route Export Pipeline, runs from Azerbaijan to Georgia’s Black Sea terminal of Supsa and can transport up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day.
Last year, about 31 million barrels of crude oil were pumped through the 830km pipeline.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing