“They claim that my statement undermined the patriotic spirit of the military. On the contrary, the spirit of our military is undermined when the current government blamed its own country for starting the war instead of the occupying Russia!” — said Giorgi Baramidze, one of the leaders of the United National Movement, who has been detained on charges of sabotage, during a court hearing.

According to him, during the interview he was not referring to the Georgian armed forces, but to people whose families had been massacred — people whose mothers, fathers, or children had been killed.

“First and foremost, it is necessary to note that this process is driven by the fact that Georgia has been taken over by a Russian oligarch.

When I was fighting against Russia in Abkhazia, he was making millions together with Russia. This person’s revenge is directed both against Georgia and against me, because he particularly hates people who fought back then and are still fighting against the same Russia today, because they stand in the way of carrying out the task he received from Putin.

When people blame the country for the shelling of Tskhinvali while it was asleep, the Prosecutor’s Office, named after Parchkhaladze-Ivanov, shows no interest whatsoever in responding or checking whether this harms Georgia’s international prestige and reputation. This Prosecutor’s Office does not protect national interests; instead, it carries out the orders of a Russian oligarch. This Prosecutor’s Office has never shown any willingness to investigate when high-ranking officials, including a former prime minister and the current de facto ruler, a Russian dictator, say that ‘Georgia started the war.’ The current so-called prime minister says the same thing: ‘Georgia started the war; the supreme commander-in-chief started the war in 2008.’

Are we guilty before our enemy? Before those who killed our people in Sukhumi and Gagra and played football with their heads? Do we owe an apology to those Russians who massacred our population?! Are we guilty before them? Is our crime that we defended our homeland? Is our crime that we fought? Is our crime that we resisted Russian aggression?

I was not speaking about the Georgian armed forces, but about people whose families had been massacred — whose mothers, fathers, and children had been killed — and who took up arms to defend their homeland.

On the other side were the Russian side and the Russian army, as well as forces trained by the Russian army. It does not matter what their ethnic background was — whether they were Abkhaz, Chechen, or otherwise.

They shot, killed, executed, and gunned people down — these are synonyms, aren’t they? Yes, I acknowledge that the word ‘executed’ naturally creates an association, and I should not have used it. I should have been more careful.

If you did not have prisoners, you could not harm anyone, could you? Accordingly, you could not execute anyone in that sense.

Where in my statement did I say the words ‘they were executed on the spot’? We did not have prisoners because they were fighting, shooting, killing, executing, and gunning people down. If someone, particularly someone who did not understand who I was referring to, or if Russian-controlled propaganda presented only one part of my interview where this word was used, then naturally people became outraged and concerned. I explained it, which is why I clarified: ‘No, this is not what I meant.’ Is that not clear? I also understand that this would have been problematic for anyone, and especially for someone with my biography.

I was the chairman of the Prisoners’ Exchange Commission, and when the substantive hearing takes place, I will bring those people here, and we will see how they can claim that I was not the chairman of that commission. I have to defend myself against the claim that I am supposedly a traitor to my homeland.

If I unintentionally hurt anyone, I apologize — to those who became victims of this propaganda and nevertheless fell for this Russian propaganda; to those who did not see my interview and were emotionally affected by it.

And I said that this one word — this single word that they seized upon and used to twist and completely turn upside down everything I had said — was used for this purpose!

This entire case has been fabricated on the basis of the claim that I supposedly accused our own people and our own army.

If we had not had prisoners, how could we have exchanged them?! We exchanged nearly 200 prisoners. Yes, they gave us more while we gave them relatively fewer, but we did have prisoners.

I will try to bring many people, including a person whom I personally brought out of captivity,” Gia Baramidze said.