Russia is interested in restoring its diplomatic relations with Georgia and awaits Tbilisi's steps, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st April, 2020) Russia is interested in restoring its diplomatic relations with Georgia and awaits Tbilisi's steps, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
"I fully share your belief that we should develop cooperation with Georgia and to make it as broad as possible, to make it useful for our citizens, for our people. We were not the initiators of the diplomatic relations disruption. We will be ready to restore diplomatic relations, but as we were not the initiators of the breakup, I think it will be necessary to wait for Georgian colleagues to raise this issue. Unfortunately, air traffic [between Russia and Georgia] is still frozen, but I hope that we will be able to solve this problem in the near future," Lavrov said at a roundtable meeting with members of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund.
The relations between Georgia and Russia deteriorated after the protests that broke out in Tbilisi in summer, after a Russian lawmaker, participating in the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, addressed the national legislature from the speaker's seat � a move that sparked harsh criticism in Georgia. As a result, Moscow decided to suspend direct flights to and from Georgia indefinitely starting July 8.
