Russian UN delegates walk out over Saakashvili’s ‘Russophobic and anti-Orthodox’ speech

25 Sep, 2013 22:59 / Updated 11 years ago

The anti-Russian and anti-Orthodox character of the Georgian president’s speech at the UN General Assembly forced the Russian delegation leave the room, Russia's Permanent Mission to the United Nations said in a statement.

After the failure of the bloody venture unleashed by him in 2008 in South Ossetia, Saakashvili’s statements at the UN General Assembly have always been marked by crude anti-Russian outbursts, Russia's UN mission noted.

“This time it was not even a statement but merely rambling delusions which were not just anti-Russian but Russophobic and anti-Orthodox in nature," the official statement says. "Luckily for the people of Georgia, the political career of this person, whose mental state requires professional evaluation, will soon come to an end.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich reportedly confirmed that the Russian delegation walked out the UN General Assembly hall in protest of remarks and assessments by the Georgian President.

“In a sign of disagreement with the assessments, broadcast by Saakashvili from the podium of the General Assembly, Russian representatives left the room,” Lukashevich explained as cited by RIA Novosti.

During his speech, Saakashvili went on to rail against Russian national interests, casting the Kremlin as an empire that does not want peace between its neighbors. 

"The Russian Federation has no interest in having stable states around it. Neighboring countries in constant turmoil is what the Kremlin is seeking," he said, adding "an old Empire is trying to reclaim its bygone borders. And ‘borders’ is actually not the right word, since this Empire - be it the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, or the Eurasian Union - never had borders. It only had margins."

Saakashvili accused Russia of occupying the independent states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia following the 2008 war with Georgia.


"Do you think the Kremlin would agree to discuss the de-occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, now that the government has changed in Tbilisi? Far from it! The annexation of Georgian lands by Russian troops continues," he told the UN General Assembly.

Saakashvili moved on to accuse Russia of dividing age-old communities.

"The Russian military keeps advancing its positions, dividing communities with new barbwires, threatening our economy, moving towards the vital Baku-Supsa pipeline, approaching more and more the main highway of Georgia and thus putting into question the very sustainability of our country.”


The Georgian President also attacked the prospect of establishing the Eurasian Union by 2015, a  political and economic alliance of post-Soviet States.   

"The Eurasian Union is both our recent past and the future shaped for us by some ex-KGB officers in Moscow."

Even the Russian orthodox church became a target during the Georgian leader’s address.

"When we hear the fake music of the orthodox brotherhood sung by Russian imperialists, can't we hear the true voice of the Patriarch Kirion who was assassinated or the eternal voice of the Patriarch Ambrosi Khelaya who was tortured during days and weeks only because he appealed to the Geneva Conference against the invasion of his country? Are we so deaf as not to hear the voices of the killed bishops and priests? Are we so uneducated that we do not recall who has repainted our churches and erased our sacred frescoes?"


Saakashvili then went on to his predictions for the future of the Russian President. “A few years from now, Vladimir Putin will have left the Kremlin and vanished from the Russian politics. Russian citizens will remember him as a ghost from the old times, the times of the Empire - the times of corruption and oppression.”