“Many of us on our team have been in politics for a long time and we have passed the age when we still believed words. If you declare one thing and do another, then it is already clear to me that you are doing nothing,” said Tengiz Sharmanashvili, a member of Georgian Dream, commenting on the statement by the EU High Representative, Kaja Kallas, regarding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia and Moldova.

According to him, they will only believe real actions.

“Many of us on our team have been in politics for a long time and we have passed the age when we no longer believe words. If you declare one thing and do another, then it is already clear to me that you are doing nothing. When you tell me that NATO’s door is open, but keep us standing in uncertainty for nearly 20 years, naturally I begin to have questions too.

So if Kaja Kallas wants to improve her image and show us that she truly cares about the future of the Georgian people, she should not merely declare that Georgia’s territorial integrity must be restored and that troops must be withdrawn. She should genuinely support Georgia in matters of European integration and economic development. She should not push us toward steps that would bring economic collapse to Georgia — something they were encouraging us to do, and which we refused to carry out. Fortunately, we were in government, otherwise who knows what would have happened here.

We will only believe real actions. We stopped believing in empty words a long time ago,” Sharmanashvili stated.

For context, Kaja Kallas stated that the presence of Russian troops in Georgia and Moldova poses a risk to European security and that no one in the European Union opposes the idea that Russian troops should leave those countries.

Kallas was responding to a question about whether there is consensus among member states regarding a document of demands she presented in the context of possible negotiations with Russia.

“Ministers also raised other kinds of concessions. Regarding Russian troops in Georgia and Moldova, this is one of the ideas, because when we speak about Europe’s key security interests and when these countries are trying to follow the European path, then the presence of Russian troops there is clearly a security risk, and it is in our interest that they leave. No one opposes this, so the matter remains under discussion,” Kallas said.