Georgia celebrates heroic fallen soldier’s birthday
Giorgi Antsukhelidze was posthumously awarded the Order of National Hero by the Georgian Government in 2013.
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Today is the birthday of Georgian national hero Giorgi Antsukhelidze, who heroically sacrificed his life for his country in the Russian-Georgian war of 2008.
Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia honoured the memory of Antsukhelidze and said that ‘we must remember him and pay tribute’.
Gakharia said that Antsukhelidze showed every citizen of Georgia the highest degree of heroism, the highest example of devotion, life, and self-sacrifice.
It is our duty and obligation to continue to live and work in such a way that will ensure that no Georgian - no citizen of Georgia - needs to make such a sacrifice in the future, as well as to unite our country and restore its territorial integrity exclusively through hard work. This is our greatest goal", Gakharia said.
Antsukhelidze was born in 1984 in the village of Alvani in the highland Akhmeta in northeast Georgia. He was conscripted into the Georgian Armed Forces in 2001. He then served in various units of the Georgian infantry headquartered at Senaki and then at Vaziani.
Junior Sergeant Antsukhelidze took his service as an assistant gunner in the 41st Battalion of the 4th Infantry Brigade during the Russia–Georgia war of August 2008.
He was captured by the enemy on August 9, during the battle of Tskhinvali. He was beaten to death at the brothers' cemetery near Tskhinvali Fifth School. Footage of his torture, recorded on an enemy soldier’s phone, was circulated on the internet in January 2009. Antsukhelidze was considered missing until November 2008, when his identification was determined by genetic examination of the bodies of military servicemen transferred to the Georgian side.
He was buried at the fraternal cemetery of Georgian soldiers at Mukhatgverdi near Tbilisi.
The Russia-Georgia war lasted five days. As a result of the conflict, 228 Georgian civilians, 170 soldiers and 14 police officers lost their lives.
A group of Georgian Armed Forces service members on Friday became the first recipients of a brand-new medal honouring the country’s National Hero Giorgi Antsukhelidze.
Today is the birthday of Georgia’s national hero Giorgi Antsukhelidze, who heroically sacrificed his life for his country in the Russian-Georgian war of 2008. He would have turned 32 today.
The remains of dozens of Georgian soldiers fallen in the five-day war between Russia and Georgia have finally been put to rest.
Georgian officials are expressing their condolences over the passing of the mother of fallen Georgian war hero Giorgi Antsukhelidze.
The Georgian public on Monday marked fourteen years since the death of national hero Giorgi Antsukhelidze, a servicemember captured in the Russia-Georgia war in 2008 before being tortured and killed by Russian forces and troops of the de facto authorities of the occupied Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) region.