Mikheil Saakashvili, the imprisoned former president of Georgia, warned on Facebook that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's recent comments about a transit route through Armenia undermine everything Georgia has achieved over the past decades.
“Ilham Aliyev’s statement that today’s transit route passes through Georgia, but tomorrow it will go through Armenia, destroys everything we achieved in the 1990s and 2000s as a country,” Saakashvili wrote.
He added that Georgia now finds itself in “the most complex geopolitical trap,” which “could soon lead either to the collapse of the state or a rapid developmental turnaround if the country escapes what he called the disasters of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s mafia.”
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze responded by saying that the alternative corridor for freight transportation would pose no threat to Georgia’s transit role. He addressed the comments made in Davos by Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Vahagn Khachaturyan of Azerbaijan and Armenia, respectively, noting that although cargo currently moves through Georgia, it may in the future go directly via the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
