Russia has mentioned it was lifting a four-year outdated ban on direct flights with Georgia. (Representational)
Tbilisi:
The founding father of Georgia’s nationwide airline Georgian Airways has banned the nation’s president from utilizing its providers after she mentioned she would boycott the airline over its resumption of flights to Russia, Russia’s TASS information company reported on Sunday.
Russia introduced this month it was lifting a four-year outdated ban on direct flights with Georgia and eradicating a decades-old visa requirement for Georgians travelling to Russia.
President Salome Zourabichvili urged Georgian authorities to thwart the Russian initiative, an attraction they ignored.
Tamaz Gaiashvili, founding father of privately-owned Georgian Airways, was cited by TASS on Sunday as saying that Zourabichvili was now “persona non grata” and could be banned till she “apologises earlier than the Georgian individuals”.
There was no rapid response from Zourabichvili.
Though Georgian officers welcomed the resumption of flights, some Georgians who need the South Caucasus nation to distance itself from Moscow in favour of the European Union demonstrated towards it in central Tbilisi on Sunday.
Many Georgians oppose any rapprochement with Moscow whose troops garrison two breakaway areas – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – that make up round one fifth of the nation’s territory.
Different Georgians are extra open to the thought, nevertheless, and the Georgian authorities has lately labored to enhance ties with Moscow, declining to impose sanctions on Russia over the warfare in Ukraine.
President Zourabichvili, whose place is essentially ceremonial and whose relations with the federal government are strained, has warned that deepening ties with Russia might jeopardise the nation’s possibilities of the EU sooner or later.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
