Georgia’s Alliance of Patriots to hold second meeting in Moscow
By Tea Mariamidze
Tuesday, October 3
Three members of the Alliance of Patriots of Georgia (APG), often referred to as a pro-Russian party, have left for Moscow to meet Russian parliamentarians for the second time.
The last visit of the APG MPs to Moscow took place in June this year.
Over five days, Ada Marshania, Nato Chkheidze and Giorgi Lomia will hold meetings with the representatives of the Russian State Duma and discuss various issues with them.
The APG, which has only six mandates in Georgia’s 150-seat Parliament, has claimed from the very beginning that dialogue with Russia was necessary to solve Georgia’s territorial problems.
“The key topic we are going to discuss in Moscow is Georgia’s occupied territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” Ada Marshania stated before departure.
She added that the APG delegation will return to Georgia on October 5.
Before departing for Russia, the Alliance of Patriots held a protest rally at the old parliament building on Rustaveli Avenue on October 1.
The party’s main demand was changes in Georgia’s Constitution. However, they also called on the government to make active steps and create a trilateral format of negotiations between Georgia, NATO and Russia.
“In order to restore the territorial integrity of our country, we have to create many new formats, not just the Geneva and Karasin-Abashidze variants but a new format composed of Georgia, NATO and Russia,” one of the leaders of the APG, Irma Inashvili, stated at the rally.
During the previous visit to Russia, the APG members met Russian Communist Party Head Leonid Kalashnikov, Kazbek Taisayev from the Communist Party and Artyom Kavinov from Putin’s Yedinaya Rossiya, which is the ruling party of Russia.
The sides agreed to establish an informal working group, which will gather every month and discuss the normalization process between Russia and Georgia.
Discussions also focused on the simplification of Russia’s visa regime and the restoration of diplomatic relations.
Despite the Alliance of Patriots’ claims that the issue of Georgia’s occupied territories is their priority, they did not raise the topic at the first meeting in Moscow.
The APG delegation’s first visit to Russia was followed by criticism of the other opposition parties who accused the party of being Russia’s satellite in Georgia.
