When it comes to imposing sanctions, almost the whole population involved in all this, thousands of winemakers, exporters, farmers. Are they asking me to impose sanctions on our own people? Who will be affected by this? Our 1 million citizens, who will not be able to transfer money from Russia, will be affected," Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili said at the governmental session.

The head of government explained why Georgia should not join the sanctions imposed on Russia.

"Should Georgia join the economic sanctions against Russia? I have clarified this and I will explain it again - based on national interests, we have said that we will not participate. I want to explain these justifications and arguments to our population.

Since the August war, Saakashvili's government has been persistently looking for ways to resume trade with Russia and open up the Russian market. Saakashvili sold almost all strategic facilities to Russian state-owned companies shortly after the war. In addition, as they failed to open the Russian market, Saakashvili issued a decree in 2012 unilaterally opening visa-free travel to Russian citizens while anti-Russian rhetoric was raging here. After that, in order to achieve the opening of the Russian market, he signed the membership of Russia in the World Trade Organization. This process was protracted, it took 19 years for Russia to join this trade organization.

I would like to tell our people that as a result of the reasonable and national patriotic policy we have, which was started by Bidzina Ivanishvili, we have achieved everything - the Association Agreement with Europe, visa-free regime, free trade and many other progresses. At the same time, we have managed to open the Russian market," Gharibashvili said.