Georgia’s ruling party official accuses opposition of acting against national interests

Irakli Kirtskhalia, the Chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party’s parliamentary faction, said on Monday that the opposition were “traitors to the homeland” who, in his words, did not understand what the homeland meant.

Kirtskhalia was responding to remarks by imprisoned former President Mikheil Saakashvili, who referred to parts of Georgia’s Russian-occupied territories as small villages.

The lawmaker claimed the opposition had consistently served the interests of external forces rather than those of Georgia.

“For them, every drop of blood spilled, every life lost, every family shattered and every home abandoned are merely statistics and nothing more. What can be said about people who did everything to benefit the occupier? The blood of our soldiers had not yet dried, and the country was still in mourning, when they were moving along the border, bringing tourists into the country. The mourning was not over - the act of betrayal had just been committed - when they stepped forward and sold more than 80 strategic assets to companies dependent on Russia”, Kirtskhalia said.

“They have a single goal: somehow to return to power and ultimately destroy our country. These are people for whom life in our country is reduced to statistics and villages to mere piles of stones; people who believed we should have sacrificed the entire nation for the sake of Ukraine. Every statement they make serves one purpose: carrying out the instructions of their foreign patrons”, he added.