World
Europe’s army of Elves fights real-world Russian disinformation

When Moscow first invaded Ukraine in 2014, a gaggle of volunteers within the small Baltic state of Lithuania, proper on Russia’s doorstep, felt compelled to do one thing.
They determined to name themselves The Elves, evoking the benevolent legendary creatures who quietly hammer away behind the scenes.
Their chief, who speaks in a brusque and authoritative voice, goes by the pseudonym The Hawk. Most of them don’t use their actual names on-line to make it tougher for Russian trolls to trace them down.
The Hawk noticed Lithuania — a former Soviet state that broke away some 30 years in the past when socialism crumbled — as being notably weak to the Kremlin disinformation machine.
Cautious of its neighbour, the lower than three million-strong nation joined the EU and NATO in 2004, enabling it to higher defend itself from malign affect each militarily and politically.
However the 2014 battle in Ukraine set off an unprecedented onslaught of disinformation concentrating on nations that didn’t toe the Moscow line.
“We had a sense that numerous troll farms began to work in opposition to Lithuania, spreading the same old lies: ‘NATO is an occupier, the EU is a failed challenge, and Lithuania is a failed nation,’” he informed Euronews.
So The Elves — all unpaid volunteers whose day jobs vary from accountants to media or IT specialists — developed their very own technique to counter the menace.
Working throughout almost a dozen nations in Europe, they monitor faux pro-Kremlin profiles and pages on social media, notably on Fb, and debunk disinformation by easy explanations and even memes.
The objective is to maintain the concerted efforts by Russian trolls to infect the net world at bay — or a minimum of minimise its affect.
Content material needs to be simple, making info accessible and comprehensible for broad swathes of the inhabitants.
“We do it on a stage that’s comprehensible to common folks — we attempt to clarify what the disinformation is. We struggle in opposition to poisonous trolls by making an attempt to take them off social networks, and by reporting them in an organised means,” The Hawk mentioned.
Mass reporting content material or customers was an web safety loophole trolls cherished utilizing to close down accounts by journalists or free speech activists — one well-known case is Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro, who grew to become a sufferer of troll exercise whereas reporting on Russian disinformation efforts.
Now The Elves are utilizing the instruments at their disposal to hit again.
Their reasoning, based on The Hawk, is easy: what issues is the reality, and there are not any set guidelines on the way it needs to be disseminated.
Combating disinformation in a battle launched by disinformation
For the reason that battle started, the Lithuanian Elves actively took half in denial-of-service or DDOS assaults on Russian and Belarusian state establishments, propaganda retailers and infrastructure websites.
These assaults, which additionally noticed participation by Nameless, a infamous activist hacking group, knocked out entry to web sites starting from non-public banks to RT and Sputnik and the Russian Ministry of Defence for days on finish.
In response to The Hawk, the struggle happening on-line is a means “to assist our brothers in Ukraine”.
“That is extra motivation — to unfold details about what is basically occurring, and to one way or the other attain Russia, to tell the Russian folks that it is a actual battle, not a bloody ‘particular operation’,” he mentioned.
However the job shouldn’t be easy, and it’s an on a regular basis wrestle in Lithuania in addition to the opposite 11 nations the place The Elves now have a presence.
Ever for the reason that Russian invasion started on 24 February, what was once far more rigorously crafted messaging from Moscow become an outright twisting of info and the creation of conspiracy theories.
“Now they’re spreading completely loopy lies. They’re not even eager about find out how to do it in knowledgeable means, it’s simply completely wild disinformation,” The Hawk said.
“They’re fairly disorganised and fairly determined. But it surely doesn’t imply they’re not aggressive. They’re nonetheless investing some huge cash into disinformation and cyberattacks as nicely.”
Nameless heroes
Aggressiveness and the accompanying sense of hazard are the principle the explanation why the likes of The Hawk use a pseudonym to today.
Even these exterior of Elves’ circles, like Dmitri Teperik, chief government of the Worldwide Centre for Defence and Safety in Tallinn, had their brush with the aggressive pushback from pro-Russian voices.
“I bear in mind from 2014 when the Crimea was occupied by Russia and the battle in Donbas began,” Teperik recalled for Euronews, “we engaged many civilian activists in Estonia for Ukraine assist, and likewise tried to remove Russian propaganda from our social media networks.”
“Myself and my colleagues had been instantly intimidated, verbally attacked and labelled fascists by pro-Kremlin proxies and different brokers of affect.
“So, the menace is actual, and the very best we will do is be very cautious and discern the trolls amongst us, what their actions and objectives are,” he mentioned.
Whereas in Lithuania The Elves could be extra directed in direction of the sources of disinformation themselves, Estonian fighters in opposition to Kremlin propaganda are keener on understanding and approaching those that are “informationally weak”.
“In Estonia, we principally take note of these teams inside our society whose media consumption patterns are completely different from the mainstream, so generally we’re speaking concerning the native Russian communities, however throughout the corona disaster, there have been people who find themselves anti-vaccination activists and so forth,” Teperik explains.
Estonia, too, shares a border with Russia, and for many years for the reason that nation’s independence, many within the nation felt they had been below direct menace from Moscow.
The worldwide curiosity sparked by the most recent invasion of Ukraine has lastly legitimised those that have been lengthy warning the remainder of the continent and the world concerning the risks of Vladimir Putin.
But they really feel solely considerably vindicated, given the human value it took for others to lastly begin paying consideration, Teperik argues.
“In fact, they missed our warnings and the alerts we’ve been sending ranging from 2007-08 after which 2014.”
“Now we see that the understanding of Russia’s aggressiveness is getting broader, however there’s nonetheless some form of naive hope amongst Western politicians in Germany, France and the US that perhaps Putin might be satisfied to face again away from Ukraine they usually can proceed with the enterprise as ordinary.”
“The very harsh determination should be made already now with a purpose to safe the EU and NATO, but additionally with a purpose to assist nations like Ukraine, Moldova or Georgia to not be attacked by aggressive Russia,” Teperik concluded.
Trolls additionally goal Russia’s ‘close to overseas’ in Central Europe
Even nations that aren’t in Russia’s fast neighborhood have Moscow’s impact on creating confusion about what’s actual and what’s not, but additionally strengthening assist for Putin-friendly politicians.
Bohumil Kartous, the spokesperson for the Czech Elves and CEO of the Prague Innovation Institute, says that the home pro-Kremlin teams principally centered on selling Czech populist political events, notably SPD and the Communist Occasion.
However the battle made them shift their deal with discrediting the politicians in energy as a substitute.
“Now, after the battle exploded, a combination of blended narratives is emitted into the digital area,” Kartous defined to Euronews.
“A few of them are copying Kremlin propaganda, as ordinary, however a few of them attempt to discredit and diminish the stance of the Czech authorities which is strongly pro-Ukrainian.”
“Some even assault the goodwill to assist refugees with an emotional enchantment to ‘what about our [Czech] folks in want,’” Kartous mentioned.
However based on the most recent polls, it appears these makes an attempt have had virtually no impression, with the Czech public persevering with to be firmly in favour of serving to Ukraine and its refugees.
But Kartous and the Czech Elves, who monitor and analyse recognized disinformation-peddling web sites and numerous pro-Kremlin teams and pages on Fb, consider the tide in public assist would possibly flip because the battle goes on.
“Issues might change if the aggression lasts a very long time and individuals are always uncovered to doubts about elevated expenditure and reasoning alongside the strains of ‘why ought to we assist these folks.’”
“That’s why we consider it’s essential to tackle sources of disinformation just like shutting down Kremlin amplifiers Sputnik and RT,” Kartous mentioned.
Why consider The Elves?
Neighbouring Slovakia, which along with the Czech Republic constituted Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite tv for pc state that broke away and peacefully cut up up in 1993, additionally has its batch of Elves.
Tomáš Kriššák, a cognitive safety knowledgeable and member of the board of advisors of the Central European Digital Media Observatory, says that for a few years he felt alone in declaring Moscow’s malign interference in a society the place the assist for Russia is cut up into two equal components.
“I’ve labored on this subject for 12 years and more often than not I felt actually determined. I felt there was no that means and no sense to do that as a result of everyone thought we had been simply making this up,” Kriššák informed Euronews.
“However once I met The Hawk, I understood that there are extra folks like me, that there are extra people who find themselves really conscious of this challenge, and we began to kind a community, which can also be vital while you don’t wish to really feel alone and loopy.”
Though every nation is completely different, and Russian disinformation makes positive to isolate the precise entry factors for disinformation on a rustic by nation foundation, a few of the disinformation patterns are the identical, Kriššák believes.
“Plenty of individuals are bandwagoning with Putin, simply repeating the lies and I’d say legal apologies of what’s occurring in Ukraine.”
“They began in 2012 with fringe media that created conspiracy theories. That helped create a decentralised motion, however in 2014 after the primary invasion of Ukraine, they actually stepped up their sport,” he mentioned.
Equally to the Czech Republic, the Kremlin disinformation actors in Slovakia had been primarily centered on inspiring these Slovakians sad with the route their nation was headed in by creating an curiosity in having a relationship with Russia.
This included politicians but additionally NGOs, teachers and even college students, Kriššák mentioned, invoking knowledge gathered by the home NGO Gerulata, which has been monitoring Moscow’s actions within the nation for years.
However after the February invasion, they used Fb pages with tens of hundreds of followers to develop into extra centered on creating an “info chaos” and manufacturing false narratives relating to what the Russian troops had been doing in Ukraine.
“Once they bombed a hospital or a theatre full of civilians [in Mariupol], they merely mentioned they had been bombing Azov troopers hiding within the place.”
The Azov Regiment is a controversial far-right Ukrainian army unit that’s a part of the nation’s Nationwide Guard and options prominently in Russian propaganda.
“They’re making an attempt to depict themselves as ‘the nice guys who’re simply denazifying the nation’ and investing numerous vitality in character assassinations of [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy who they depict as a loser, a junky, a foul actor, you title it. That’s what they do.”
For Kriššák, the Kremlin’s efforts to have an effect on public opinion in Slovakia is a continuation of Russia’s obsession with sustaining affect within the space post-1968, the yr wherein the Soviet Union invaded the nation, sending its tanks to Prague to violently quash efforts to liberalise Czechoslovakia’s communist system.
Czechoslovak activists and protesters on the time had been combating in opposition to pro-Soviet propaganda that the key police used to maintain management over the general public sphere.
“The key police had been diligently poisoning the minds of Slovaks for a lot of, a few years, and Slovaks in a means are a extremely cynical nation — they don’t seem to be sceptical, they’re cynical — and cynicism continues to be misused by propaganda to really persuade folks that everybody is mendacity,” he concluded.
Disinformation – low cost, efficient and constantly underestimated
Ross Burley, the cofounder and government director of Centre for Info Resilience, the UK’s main non-profit devoted to countering disinformation, informed Euronews that the twenty first century has made disinformation a really low cost and efficient weapon.
“Usually the only disinformation campaigns are the best, in addition to those that draw on a kernel of reality after which run with it. The thought is to introduce doubt and confuse,” Burley defined.
Moscow’s claims that US-funded organic laboratories in Ukraine are getting used to provide bioweapons — one other within the line of justifications for the battle — is an effective instance of this, based on Burley.
“It’s one thing that’s within the public consciousness post-covid, but additionally there’s a kernel of reality. There have been laboratories, a few of which have obtained US funding. Now, the purpose of those laboratories was to not develop organic weapons, clearly.”
“But it surely’s nearly introducing doubt and making it interesting to readers in a means. There’s an instructiveness to conspiracies, having that insider info, that form of feeling that you just’re uncovering one thing. All of these issues are very human, they usually faucet into that very, very nicely,” he illustrated.
Countering propaganda requires probably the most expert and never essentially probably the most established figures like distinguished journalists or politicians — one thing that The Elves tapped into early on, Burley defined.
“Definitely again once they began doing it in 2014, nobody else was doing anything on this scale,” Burley mentioned. “This sort of nebulous mannequin that The Elves had of little cells and people working collectively was extremely efficient.”
When the varied Western governments started to consider find out how to utilise civil society actors to try to counter disinformation, they had been solely keen to work with current organisations and firms, Burley identified.
“And you might have a man who’s in his mom’s basement or no matter who’s an absolute genius at these things, however wasn’t being engaged with.”
“Whereas the Elves mannequin was to get the very best folks, probably the most dedicated folks, and produce all of them collectively in a way more collegiate and systematic means,” he defined.
Now, the Elves’ long-term worth and skill to maintain on combating will depend upon defending themselves from threats from each the skin and the within.
“You clearly must watch out with the human intelligence issue and there could be folks making an attempt to infiltrate and that’s the most important hazard,” Burley mentioned.
“If you happen to welcome everyone with open arms, you might be strolling the wolf into the sheep pen, or a fox into the hen coop.”

World
Trump’s Vision for Gaza Shifts Away From a Cease-Fire Deal

Barely a week ago, Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, waving placards thanking President Trump and his Middle East envoy for their role in helping secure an initial cease-fire deal in Gaza and getting some hostages freed.
Many of them were hoping that Mr. Trump would strong-arm Israel’s long-hesitant prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, into agreeing to negotiate an end to the war with Hamas and get the rest of the hostages released when the two leaders met in Washington on Tuesday.
Instead, they woke up to news of Mr. Trump’s fantastical idea of removing the population of roughly two million Gazans from the devastated enclave to make way for a glittering, American-owned Middle Eastern Riviera.
Far-fetched as Mr. Trump’s vision for Gaza may be — the Arab world has roundly rejected it and any forcible removal of a population violates international law — it abruptly shifted attention away from the future of the cease-fire deal, whose initial, six-week phase is due to end in early March.
As Mr. Trump sketched out his grandiose plans for Gaza, he placed little public pressure on Mr. Netanyahu to proceed with talks via Qatari and Egyptian mediators to turn the temporary cease-fire into a permanent cessation of hostilities. That left Israel with a wide berth on how it might deal with Gaza next.
The talks, which were meant to start this week, are now up in the air. And Mr. Netanyahu will leave Washington with Mr. Trump’s endorsement of what far-right members of the Israeli government have effectively been calling for: the mass migration of Palestinians from Gaza.
That leaves the fate of the hostages still held by Hamas in question as the militant group assesses how to move forward and many Palestinians worrying about whether the war might resume again.
“On the one hand, we are very grateful for what Trump has been doing,” said Idit Ohel, whose son, Alon Ohel, 23, was kidnapped from a bomb shelter as he tried to flee a music festival during the Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7, 2023, which started the war.
“Now,” Ms. Ohel said of Mr. Trump, “I don’t understand the implications of what he is saying or how this is going to bring my son home.”
Mr. Netanyahu, in an interview with Fox News late Wednesday, hailed Mr. Trump’s idea as “remarkable,” saying it should be “pursued,” drowning out any talk of the details of how to move cease-fire negotiations forward.
And on Thursday morning, Mr. Netanyahu’s loyal defense minister, Israel Katz, issued a statement saying he had instructed the Israeli military to prepare a plan to facilitate the exit of “any resident of Gaza who is interested to leave to any place in the world that agrees to accept them.”
The initial phase of the cease-fire deal took effect on Jan. 19 and provides for Hamas to release 33 hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. About 79 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 35 of whom are presumed to be dead.
Talks were due to start on Monday — Day 16 of the deal — on a second phase, which is supposed to result in the rest of the living hostages being released and to usher in a permanent cessation of hostilities. That would mean a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Wording about the transition to the second phase had been left intentionally vague, since Israel and Hamas are holding out for mutually exclusive demands.
Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas no longer holds sway in Gaza and to resume fighting, if necessary. Hamas refuses to give up control or disarm.
In repeated statements in Washington, Mr. Netanyahu laid out his three priorities for Gaza, with the hostages only coming in second.
“In Gaza, Israel has three goals: Destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, secure the release of all our hostages and ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel,” he said.
Mr. Netanyahu could stand to lose his own grip on power, with the far-right flank of his governing coalition having threatened to quit if he ends the war in Gaza with Hamas still in control there.
As of Thursday, no Israeli delegation had yet set out to Doha, Qatar, for negotiations, according to two Israeli officials who were not authorized to discuss the sensitive issue publicly.
Mr. Trump also sounded less committal than he has in the past about the fate of the hostages and ending the war, saying it was unclear if the cease-fire would hold. But he spoke of “going to a Phase II” of the cease-fire and said he would like to get all the hostages out. “If we don’t, it will just make us somewhat more violent,” he said, possibly indicating U.S. backing for a resumption of the fighting.
In the Middle East, analysts were parsing what Mr. Trump’s tectonic diversion on the future of Gaza might mean in the more immediate term.
“I think what he did was throw the old checkers board off the table and replaced it with Monopoly,” said Kobi Michael, an expert in the Israel-Palestinian conflict at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “He didn’t just change the rules of the game but the game itself,” he said.
Both Israel and Hamas are likely to want to buy time — Hamas to rehabilitate itself and its forces after 15 grueling months of war and Mr. Netanyahu to keep his right-wing coalition together — and may try to extend the first phase of the deal, allowing for more hostage-for-prisoner exchanges.
Mr. Michael said Mr. Trump’s vision for a Gaza without Gazans could work as a threat and put significant pressure on Hamas to release more hostages. Conversely, he said, it could cause Hamas to walk away from the deal altogether.
“Mr. Trump is a businessman,” Mr. Michael said. “He takes risks.”
Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security, said that even the mere suggestion of relocating two million Gazans was likely to complicate the cease-fire negotiations by making Hamas more cautious, and to destabilize the entire Arab world.
Mr. Trump’s declaration, he said, was “The perfect recipe for recruiting more people to Hamas,” adding that Mr. Trump’s “new colonialism” had given Hamas “easy marketing tools.”
Many people believe Mr. Trump’s vision for Gaza is not feasible, but regardless of the reality, Mr. Netanyahu has come out with no sign of being pressured by Mr. Trump, or of any daylight between them. His government is intact, for now.
An Israeli official who briefed Israeli political reporters in Washington after the Netanyahu-Trump meeting said it was now clear to Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition partners that bringing down his right-wing government with Mr. Trump as president would be irresponsible and foil “historic” opportunities in the coming years.
Relatives of the hostages warn that they do not have time.
“I live in daily fear,” said Alon Nimrodi, the father of Tamir Nimrodi, an Israeli soldier who is slated to be released only under a second phase of the deal.
Mr. Trump’s vision for Gaza was not a bad one, Mr. Nimrodi said. “But this is not the time to talk about it,” he said. Plans for Gaza should wait till “after the hostages are out,” he said.
World
Netanyahu gifts Trump controversial item that helped turned tide in war against Hezbollah

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump an unusual gift during his most recent trip to Washington, D.C., this week — a gold-plated pager.
The present was a nod to the controversial mass attack believed to have been carried out by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency against Hezbollah Sept. 17, 2024, in which thousands of pagers, walkie-talkie-like devices and radios simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and Syria around 3:30 p.m.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office to Fox News Digital said, “The pager symbolizes the prime minister’s decision that led to a turning point in the war and marked the beginning of Hezbollah’s strategic collapse.
ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER ORDERS IDF TO PLAN FOR GAZANS TO LEAVE IN LINE WITH TRUMP’S CONTROVERSIAL PROPOSAL
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump a gold-plated pager during a visit to the White House Feb. 6, 2024. (Israeli Government Press Office)
“This strategic operation reflects Israel’s strength, technological superiority and tactical ingenuity in confronting its adversaries.”
An image obtained by Fox News Digital showed the pager mounted to a wooden plaque with a message on the device that said, “Press with both hands,” accompanied by a double downward arrow sign, the same message that reportedly showed moments before the devices detonated.
The plaque also came with a message to Trump calling him Israel’s “greatest friend and ally.”
The statement appears to be the first time Netanyahu’s office has publicly commented on the strike against the terrorist network in the summer.
Though the attacks were intended to target Hezbollah terrorists, the explosions also injured, maimed and killed civilians, including at least two children. In total, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that 32 people were killed and 3,250 others were injured.
ALLIES AND FOES REJECT TRUMP’S ‘RIVIERA’ PLANS FOR GAZA: ‘NEW SUFFERING AND NEW HATRED’

A symbolic portrait of a young Lebanese girl who was killed in a deadly pager attack is pictured next to flowers placed in front of the Lebanese embassy in northern Tehran, Iran, Sept. 18, 2024. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
U.N. Human Rights experts condemned the operation and said the indiscriminate nature of the attacks amounted to “war crimes.”
“These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time,” one expert told the OHCHR. “Such attacks require prompt, independent investigation to establish the truth and enable accountability for the crime of murder.”
Despite the limited number of terrorists killed in the widespread attacks, Israeli officials have championed the operation as a successful psychological blow to Hezbollah.
TRUMP’S GAZA ‘TAKEOVER’ RANKLES AMERICA FIRST CONSERVATIVES, ALLIES SUGGEST NEGOTIATOR-IN-CHIEF IS AT WORK
Though Israel was immediately suspected of being involved in the reported years-in-the-making operation, Jerusalem had not officially confirmed its role publicly before.
However, by November 2024, Israeli reports revealed comments leaked from a Cabinet meeting in which Netanyahu was quoted as saying, “The pager operation and the elimination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah were carried out despite the opposition of senior officials in the defense establishment and those responsible for them in the political echelon.”

President Donald Trump hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 2025. (Avi Ohayon (GPO)/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The prime minister’s comments were an apparent dig at former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who he fired just weeks prior to the comments over disagreements regarding the war effort against Hamas and Hezbollah.
Neither the White House nor the U.N. immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.
World
Georgia’s EU membership by 2030 is achievable, PM Kobakhidze says

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told Euronews, in an exclusive interview, that Brussels needs to be more flexible in EU membership talks.
In his first interview after the South Caucasus country hit pause on its EU accession talks, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told Euronews that the ball was in Brussels’ court, and that the bloc needed to be more flexible in its approach to new members.
Kobakhidze said Georgia was facing “some significant challenges with the European bureaucracy” but emphasised that he was still “very optimistic” that his country would obtain EU membership by 2030.
“(We) will be consistent in following this goal and then hopeful that the approach to Georgia will be more fair in the next coming years,” he told Euronews.
In November, Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would pause discussions on its bid to join the EU until 2028 due to what the prime minister described then as “blackmail and manipulation” from some of the bloc’s politicians.
The EU gave Georgia candidate status in December 2023, but halted its membership application process indefinitely and cut financial support last June after the passage of a “foreign influence” law that the bloc considers to be Russian-inspired and authoritarian.
Kobakhidze told Euronews that Tbilisi’s policies were not to blame for the fact that there are currently not “healthy relations” between Georgia and the EU.
“It’s because of the European bureaucracy and the policies towards Georgia,” he said. “So, if that policy changes, everything will be in a better shape.”
Kobakhidze was reappointed in November as prime minister by the ruling Georgian Dream party, whose disputed victory in October’s parliamentary election has sparked massive demonstrations and led to an opposition boycott of parliament.
Opposition forces — including Georgia’s former president Salome Zourabichvili — have condemned the results as a “total falsification” of the vote. The European Parliament in November adopted a resolution condemning the vote and calling for new elections to be held under international supervision.
The ruling party, which has been in power since 2012, has denied any wrongdoing.
Realism with Russia relations
Meanwhile, protesters and critics have accused Georgian Dream — established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire who made his fortune in Russia and is widely considered to be the country’s de facto leader — of turning away from the West and towards Moscow.
Kobakhidze told Euronews that Georgia had “no space for restoring diplomatic relations (with Russia) because of the occupation of our two historic regions”.
Moscow recognised the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states in 2008 after Russian troops repelled a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia in a brief war. The two breakaway territories make up 20% of Georgia’s territory.
“This territorial integrity is recognised by the international community and of course we have to defend our national interests in this respect, but our vision is peaceful,” Kobakhidze said, adding that a “non-peaceful solution is absolutely impossible”.
“We would like to restore our territorial integrity — there’s no alternative — and we are hopeful at some point this will be realistic. Let’s see,” he said.
“But we run with a pragmatic policy and that’s the key content of our policy towards Russia,” Kobakhidze added. “We are keeping trade and economic relations with Russia and that’s how we are going to run it for now.”
When asked about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the prospect of a peace agreement, Kobakhidze said there was “no alternative” to a ceasefire.
Ukraine is “suffering a lot”, the prime minister said, citing the loss of life, damage to infrastructure and Russia’s occupation of large swathes of Ukrainian territory.
“The international community should be fully concentrated on promoting this ceasefire agreement and peace,” Kobakhidze said. “That’s the key for improving the overall situation in the region and the world.”
Watch the entire interview on Euronews’ The Europe Conversation this week.
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