The irresponsible "war party" wanted to destroy the country for the second time - the policy we are implementing is actually a sovereign and independent policy, Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Gharibashvili said during his annual report speech at the Parliament.

According to him, the government openly said from the beginning that it will not take steps that would harm the national interests of the country.

"Occupation remains one of the main challenges for us. Russian occupation forces continue to be based on the territory of our country. Occupation, as you know, is a challenge that our government inherited in 2012. For comparison, I would like to remind the public that after the August war, none of the countries, including us, have initiated concrete measures to stop the occupation of the occupying country, to condemn it - I mean sanctions. These people [the opposition] asked us to impose sanctions, including economic sanctions. Do you remember how many campaigns they ran? They wanted to start a war, open a "second front" and destroy the country. This irresponsible "war party" wanted to destroy the country for the second time. From the beginning, we publicly and openly said that we will not take any step that would harm the national interests of our country, the interests of the people. These were the statements of me and our team members, and we follow this policy to this day. We will follow this policy and no one can change us. We will implement only those policies that our country needs. If we look at the policy carried out by the rulers of Georgia during the last 30 years, it is actually a sovereign, independent policy that we are implementing. With our steps, we will actually strengthen our sovereignty day by day. So, I would like to point out once again that imposing the so-called sanctions, introducing some restrictions, blocking trade, economy, etc - it would have been completely irresponsible. Moreover, this can be called a betrayal of one's country and people. If anyone had got hurt, it would have been our country. We would not have been able to speak so boldly that we have economic growth and jobs. 250 thousand new jobs were created in the last 2 years. How can you imagine where we would be today if these people were in power today? When they were in power, they could not avoid the war, they brought this disaster to the country. They brought a great ordeal to our people, they lost territories," said the Prime Minister.