Georgian PM dismisses US condemnation of violence against protesters
World
Georgian PM dismisses US condemnation of violence against protesters
TBILISI (Reuters) - Facing condemnation from the United States and defiance from his own president, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze praised police on Sunday for cracking down on protesters who he said were acting on foreign orders to undermine the state.
Georgia, a country of 3.7 million people that was once part of the Soviet Union, has been plunged into crisis since the governing Georgian Dream party said on Thursday it was halting European Union accession talks for the next four years.
The EU and the United States are alarmed by what they see as Georgia's shift away from a pro-Western path and back towards Russia's orbit. Big anti-government protests have taken place in the capital Tbilisi for the past three nights, and police have fired water cannon and tear gas into the crowds.
More protests are planned in Tbilisi for Sunday night, and local media reported demonstrations were taking place in towns and cities throughout the country.
Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that an attempted revolution was taking place in Georgia. The former Russian president said on Telegram that Georgia was "moving rapidly along the Ukrainian path, into the dark abyss. Usually this sort of thing ends very badly".
Medvedev, once seen as a modernising reformer, has reinvented himself as an aggressive hawk since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, often hurling dire warnings at Kyiv and its Western supporters.
The Kremlin has yet to comment on the latest events in Georgia, but it has long accused the West of fomenting revolutions in post-Soviet countries that Moscow still regards as part of its sphere of influence.
'FOREIGN INSTRUCTORS'
Georgian Prime Minister Kobakhidze dismissed criticism by the United States, which has condemned the use of "excessive force" against demonstrators.
"Despite the heaviest systematic violence applied yesterday by the violent groups and their foreign instructors, the police acted at a higher standard than the American and European ones and successfully protected the state from another attempt to violate the constitutional order," he told a press conference, without providing evidence of foreign involvement.
