US Sec of State Blinken: 300,000 Georgians still displaced from homes 13 years after Russian invasion

Blinken further said “Moscow has failed to provide information on its military forces in Georgia.” Photo: Secretary Antony Blinken/Twitter.

Agenda.ge, 21 Jan 2022 - 11:08, Tbilisi,Georgia

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and thirteen years later “nearly 300,000 Georgians are still displaced from their homes,” United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday. 

Blinken was speaking ahead of his meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov today in Geneva, and made comments about the internally displaced Georgian citizens that lost their homes as a result of the 2008 conflict as well as the Abkhazian War in the 1990s.

Blinken said Russia aimed to turn its neighbouring states that are part of the European Union's Eastern Partnership - Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova - “into puppet states,” adding “if Russia occupies Ukraine its efforts to control their activities, to crack down on any spark of democratic expression will intensify.”

Once the principles of sovereignty and self-determination are thrown out, you revert to a world in which the rules we shaped together over decades erode and then vanish,” Blinken said