Parliament Speaker vows Georgia will “continue to stand by Ukrainian friends”

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Thursday said the country’s citizens  had “stood by Ukrainian friends since the first day of the war” and would “continue doing so”.

In his address at the third Parliamentary Summit of the International Crimea Platform, Papuashvili said the world was “witnessing a devastating war the like of which nobody had thought would ever happen again in Europe for over two and a half years.

We, Georgians, have stood by our Ukrainian friends since the first day of the war, and we will continue doing so, because nobody knows the pain of war and the value of peace better than we do”, he told the event.

“The dreadful conflict in Ukraine has served as an awakening call for many countries [...] reminding them that peace is precious and indivisible, and it is also very fragile”, the Speaker told the Platform.

He further stressed that Europe, a “haven of peace and stability for decades”, was now a “hotspot” of a large armed conflict.

We had warned our partners that the international system, which had failed to prevent the war in Georgia and now in Ukraine, did not provide for just and sustainable peace. The awakening, which has followed the war, made many of our partners rethink and re-appraise the ways to avoid such tremendous tragedies in future”, the lawmaker said.

“We knew firsthand what frozen conflicts, brought about by temporary truce, mean. Truce does not ensure sustainable peace. Therefore, mere freezing of the conflict cannot bring about credible guarantees for peace”, he continued.

It is good we are now looking to future solutions, and these solutions should be based on just and sustainable peace. And these solutions should also be sustained by a relevant international system that makes such peace possible and lasting”, Papuashvili noted.

He further wished “our Ukrainian brothers and sisters a just peace, and thorough and quick restoration of everything destroyed by the war”.