Russia unleashes information attack

Russia failed to gain international support for its dirty games against Georgia and the recognition of puppet regimes as independent states, so is now trying to accuse Georgia of different sins to discredit it internationally. Russian foreign ministry official representatives recently publicly criticised Georgia’s law on the occupied territories and accused Georgia of violating the rights of foreigners and Russian citizens in particular. It also recommended Russians not to travel to Georgia, which according to Russian is following a policy of discrimination.

Following the occupation of Georgia’s territories by Moscow, Georgia adopted a special law on the occupied territories. The law determines that any foreign citizen or citizen of Georgia is only allowed to enter these territories from the Georgian side. If anybody violates this law and enters the occupied territories at different places he/she will be persona non grata in Georgia and if he/she tries to enter Georgia at a later date he/she will be charged with the illegal crossing of Georgian borders in breach of the law. Heeding this many governments issued special warnings to their citizens to avoid entering occupied territories from anywhere other than Georgia, but there have already been several whereby citizens of different countries have violated the law, entering Abkhazia in particular from Russia, then returned. When they later tried to visit Georgia they were detained and were liable to pay a fine or go to prison.

There have been a number of cases in which Armenians have entered Abkhazia or Tskhinvali region from Russia and then tried to travel to Armenia via Georgia. Russians experience a similar problem. They have the choice to enter Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region from Russia, but if they do so, they lose the right to visit Georgia later, as their passports will contain a stamp from entering those territories in breach of Georgian legislation.

Russian Foreign Ministry official, Nesterenko in his statement commenting on the Georgian law on occupied territories commented that by exercising this legislation Georgia wants to isolate Abkhazia and South Ossetia from the outside world. We should agree that Nesterenko's statement is absolutely correct; Georgia really wants to isolate artificial puppet regimes from the rest of the civilised world and it does so in a legal way.

However Nesterenko complains further and alleges that Russians are under great pressure when they visit Georgia on private business or to visit relatives. Here, Comrade Nesterenko lies. Russian journalist Durnovo stated in his recent appearance in RTVI there are no signs of hostile relations against Russians whatsoever in Georgia. So Nesterenko is deliberately distorting the facts, scaring Russian citizens to force them to refrain from traveling to Georgia on business for personal reasons. He deliberately recommends against travel to Georgia because the Kremlin is against Russians making contact with Georgians as in general it proves the friendliness of Georgians, their tolerance and hospitality. This frustrates the Russian portrayal of Georgians as cannibals. His statement proves that Georgian-Russian relations are in the slow lane due to the aggressive ideological work conducted by the Kremlin; this is all part of the propaganda war against Georgia aiming at discrediting it worldwide. It looks as if Russia is particularly annoyed at the Georgian peoples’ tolerance and their awareness of the fact that the ordinary Russian and Georgian people have no arguments whatsoever and it was the imperialistic aggressiveness of the Russian leadership which confronted two nations.