Giorgi Baramidze, one of the leaders of the opposition United National Movement party, has stated that he does not rule out being extradited to Russia by the Georgian authorities. This comes amid a scandal surrounding the politician’s remarks that during the war in Abkhazia in the 1990s, Georgians shot the enemy and took no prisoners.
“For participating in combat operations against Russia in Ukraine, a Russian court sentenced me to 6 years and 6 months in prison. I do not rule out that this ‘Russian’ regime of traitors will simply go ahead and hand me over directly to Russia. I do not rule out arrest, a bullet, or physical assault from them. We see the scale that this barrage of slander is reaching.”
According to Baramidze, although the authorities themselves understand that this is absurd from a legal standpoint, they need all of this to discredit and smear him.
“Everyone knows my background: where I was, where I fought, how many prisoners I freed, and whether I was involved in that at all. These shameless people have loose tongues, and their baseness knows no bounds. What I actually said was that the war was not between Abkhazians and Georgians, but that Russia was the occupier that both started and waged this war. Russia is our enemy. Nothing is as this government claims as it broadcasts the messages of its Kremlin masters, pretending it was an ethnic conflict. Now they are treacherously focusing on that very narrative. These are the same people who accuse Georgia of starting the [2008] war.”
Baramidze is convinced that representatives of Georgian Dream are carrying out instructions from above. At the same time, the opposition politician acknowledged that he might have expressed himself improperly and should have used different phrasing: “But I stated the main point: we, desperate people whose mothers, fathers, and brothers were killed, whose families were destroyed, took no prisoners. <…> Accordingly, if you do not take a prisoner, you shoot at the enemy, you shoot them.”
As a reminder, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Georgia has launched an investigation into Baramidze on charges of high treason and sabotage.