Shalva Papuashvili, a senior figure in Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party and speaker of the country’s disputed parliament, has blamed Ukraine for escalating the war with Russia, arguing that false expectations of NATO membership emboldened Kyiv.
Georgia’s government faced mass protests throughout 2023 and 2024 – triggered, among other things, by its decision to suspend the country’s EU bid and introduce a foreign agents law that mirrored Russian legislation. More recently, the government has cracked down on protesters with jail sentences and fines.
Speaking to journalists in parliament on Dec. 19, Papuashvili claimed that Ukraine’s actions mirrored those of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ahead of Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia.
In August 2008, Russian forces launched a full-scale military assault on Georgia, occupying the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – territories that remain under Russian control to this day. The pro-Russian Georgian Dream government has repeatedly blamed Saakashvili for triggering that war.
Papuashvili said Georgia and Ukraine had been misled for years by Western assurances.
“We heard after the [NATO] Bucharest Summit, after 2008, year after year, every year we heard about the open door, that Ukraine and Georgia would definitely become NATO members. Every year, Ukraine was told that it would definitely, definitely, definitely become a member,” Papuashvili said. “It now seems that they never actually intended Ukraine to join NATO.”
The speaker suggested two possible explanations:
“One is that this was deceit, which some Western politicians may have engaged in. The other is sabotage, to delude the country, to create a perception, as the Europe-funded NGOs and Europeans are so fond of doing, that it’s already standing at the threshold of the open door, already at the window, about to step through, so that deluded by this they would go for any escalation, as Saakashvili did in 2008, as we saw happen in Ukraine more than once,” he said.
“In the final analysis, when push came to shove, when war began, not a single NATO soldier stood in the trenches. This is the truth that we see once again so clearly today. This is precisely the tragic reality. In truth, there’s nothing new in this either.” he added.
Papuashvili went on to declare that Ukraine and the European Union are the losers of the current war, pointing to continued EU financial support for Kyiv.
“It is still impossible to say whether there will be a winner in this war,” he said. “But it can already be stated with certainty that this war has two losers: these are Ukraine and the European Union. Ukraine, which now has to make a decision on the de facto recognition of the loss of its territories, which has lost hundreds of thousands of its citizens over these 4 years, shed blood, its economy has collapsed, and is now having to think about the de facto surrender of territories, and the second – the European Union, which has now placed the burden of providing financial assistance and military assistance to Ukraine on its own shoulders.”
His comments echo a broader pro-Russian narrative promoted by Georgian Dream. The ruling party has repeatedly drawn parallels between Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the 2008 war, placing the responsibility for the war on Kyiv’s shoulders while downplaying Moscow’s role.