Parliament official says path forward in “ever-changing geopolitical landscape” requires “both caution and unity”

Levan Makhashvili, the Chair of the Committee on European Integration of the Georgian Parliament, on Friday said over the past three years, the Georgian Government had made “difficult yet necessary” decisions to ensure peace and preserve our statehood.

In his remarks at a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Makhashvili noted that navigating these turbulent times was possible by supporting one another, not undermining each other by illegal foreign interference and disinformation.

“Drawing from our own experiences of past three conflicts with Russia in the 1990s and in 2008, as well as ongoing Russian occupation of Georgia’s two historic regions, we understood that the only way to survive this once-in-a-lifetime geopolitical earthquake was to set aside emotions and to act pragmatically”, Makhashvili said.

“While we were called all sorts of labels by some hot minds, all we were doing was indeed to survive. And the ongoing developments on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine indicates only one thing - we made the right decisions. For small states like Georgia and many of you in this room, the path forward in this ever-changing geopolitical landscape requires both caution and unity”, he noted.

“We must navigate these turbulent times by supporting one another, not undermining each other by illegal foreign interference and disinformation that we heard today in this room too. It is only through solidarity—and through respecting each other’s democratic cultures and currents—that we can shield our public from the destabilizing effects of external interference”, he concluded.