‘I wouldn’t sanction Georgia out of respect for its people’ – Putin

Any measures that damage ties between Russia and Georgia must be avoided, Vladimir Putin said. As for the Georgian TV host who targeted him with an abusive rant, the man is too insignificant to be mentioned, the President added.

“I wouldn’t introduce sanctions against Georgia out of respect for its people,” Putin said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the parliament had urged the Russian government to ban imports of Georgian wine and table water, as well as to restrict money transfers to the country, among other measures.

Another spike in tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi occurred last weekend, when local TV host, Georgiy Gabuniya opened his TV chat show with an obscene address to Putin, delivered in Russian, in which he targeted the President and his late parents in the most vulgar terms possible.

The bizarre stunt made headlines, but the Russian leader believes that it wasn’t worth the fuss. “He came out, said something, being a real nothing,” he said of Gabuniya.

As for calls to bring criminal charges against the so-called journalist for offending a head of state, Putin pointed out that the man just “didn’t deserve such an honor.”

Anti-Russian sentiment in Georgia is promoted by those who don’t remember history and who want to harm their own country, he added.

Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili had previously called on Moscow not to fall for the provocations of the radical opposition in her country. “Our peaceful policies are the only way to preserve stability in the region,” she stressed.

In late June, the arrival of a Russian delegation to the session of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO) in Tbilisi led to violent protests, instigated by the country’s opposition. After that, Moscow decided that the rise of Russophobia made Georgia unsafe for its citizens and introduced a ban on all Russian flights to and from the country.

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