European integration, saying that EU membership has no value for Georgia without Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region.
“He drew a completely inappropriate comparison between Abkhazia and Karabakh, stating that just as Armenia managed to move past and shed the trauma of Karabakh, Abkhazia represents a similar trauma,” states Papuashvili.
“He suggested that by shedding the Karabakh issue, Armenia gained the opportunity to elevate its relations with Brussels to a new stage, and implied that we, too, should forget and cast aside our own traumas to foster closer ties with Brussels. This is part of a campaign advocating for Georgia’s entry into the EU without Abkhazia and Tskhinvali – a campaign that appears to be directly orchestrated from abroad. The same narrative being directed at Ukraine – that it must make territorial concessions to accelerate its development and make its European prospects more tangible – mirrors the points Gvaramia raised regarding Karabakh (claiming that shedding that trauma facilitated Armenia’s rapid progress) and the hints being dropped to Moldova concerning Transnistria; all of this has fueled a direct propaganda push for a Georgia in the EU without Abkhazia and Tskhinvali.
