Founder of Georgia’s ruling party promises to ‘apologise’ for 2008 war with Russia

Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party will “apologise” for the country’s 2008 war with Russia should it secure a majority at upcoming parliamentary elections in October, the party’s billionaire founder said on Saturday in comments reported by public broadcaster 1TV.

Speaking at a campaign rally in the city of Gori, former prime minister and honorary lifetime Georgian Dream chair Bidzina Ivanishvili said the United National Movement, which was the country’s ruling party between 2004 and 2012, was responsible for the August 2008 war that led to Russia taking control of the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Stressing that the war had not been “the desire of either the Georgian or the Ossetian people”, Ivanishvili pledged that Georgian Dream would ensure those it deemed responsible for the war were prosecuted in a “Georgian Nuremberg process” should it be re-elected for a record fourth term in office in October.

“After the October 26 elections, when the instigators of the war are held accountable and those responsible for the destruction of the Georgian-Ossetian brotherhood face the harshest legal consequences, we will find the strength to apologise for the suffering endured by our Ossetian brothers and sisters in 2008, caused by the traitorous National Movement”, Ivanishvili said.

In a statement later on Saturday, the United National Movement called on Ivanishvili to apologise for the “national disgrace” caused by his comments, saying that he was “serving only Russia's interests, undermining the policy of non-recognition of the occupied territories and harming Georgia's national interest”.

Editor-in-chief of Russian propaganda broadcaster RT Margarita Simonyan, meanwhile, praised Ivanishvili, saying that she “warmly welcomed” his “surprisingly rational” remarks.

Earlier in September, Ivanishvili accused Georgia’s opposition of both “provoking” the 2008 war and trying to drag Georgia into the ongoing war in Ukraine by opening a “second front” against Russia on Georgian territory.

Tbilisi broke off diplomatic ties with Moscow in 2008 after Russia invaded the country in what it called a “peace enforcement” operation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. To this day, Georgia and most of the international community consider both regions to be under Russian military occupation.