The U.S. Embassy in Georgia told Georgian news outlet “Netgazeti”, that it had canceled its participation in the military component of the government event planned for May 26 to celebrate Georgia’s Independence Day, because of the anti-western statements made on April 29 by the honorary Chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili.
The U.S. Embassy also said that it “remains a strong supporter of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and wants Georgia to be firmly integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community”. The Embassy urged the Georgian government to “return to this path”.
On April 29, addressing the crowd at the government rally Ivanishvili said, where he criticized foreign influence in Georgian politics and alleged that past administrations were controlled by external powers. He stated “Georgia should be governed by people who are elected by Georgians. From 2004-2012, we were governed by a foreign-appointed revolutionary committee. They came to power as a result of an NGO-led revolution.” Ivanishvili went on to accuse these foreign influences of orchestrating violence and unrest in Georgia: “The bloody regime that was established showed us the price of this mistake. Some think the reason was Mikheil Saakashvili’s sadism and lack of patriotism. In fact, all of this was ordered by their patrons from abroad. Those very politicians who endorsed those policies now portray Saakashvili and his cronies as innocent.”
Commenting on the absence of U.S. servicemen and women from the event, Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said on June 10: “If someone doesn’t want to celebrate, they don’t want to celebrate, it’s our day and we will celebrate it, that’s the most important thing.
In his statement, Papuashvili also underlined Georgia’s longstanding military cooperation with the United States, saying: “If a politician’s statement is a reason for someone to not celebrate Independence Day in this format with the soldiers of his strategic partner country, who were taking bullets alongside American soldiers in Afghanistan, it is a matter for them to decide. We used to demonstrated our independence in other ways, we demonstrated it by taking the bullets alongside the American soldiers, while most of the NATO countries did not show their noses from their headquarters in Afghanistan; we were on the front line, this is our approach, we look at the world from our point of view.”