Zelenskyi: EU must pressure ‘Russian-controlled mafia in Georgia’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has called on the EU to put pressure on the Georgian Dream-led government following their halting of Georgia’s EU membership bid three weeks ago.
‘Unfortunately, the Russian-controlled mafia in Georgia is working to drag the country under Putin’s influence and distract it from the European path. The current government in Tbilisi refuses to cooperate with the EU’, Zelenskyi stated during a meeting of the European Council in Brussels.
He urged European leaders to put pressure on Georgian Dream founder and billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili and ‘his cronies’ to ‘prevent them from benefiting from Georgia's stolen European future and lost decades of progress’.
‘We cannot afford to lose a single country in our Europe, because the fall of one will bring us all closer to division and conflict’, Zelenskyi emphasised.