After the operations that were carried out in South Ossetia in 2008, Mikheil Saakashvili has no right to act as an arbiter. This is what member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma Elena Panina told RIA Novosti, commenting on Saakashvili’s statements on Nagorno-Karabakh.

Earlier, Saakashvili had declared that Nagorno-Karabakh ‘is a sovereign territory of Azerbaijan’.

Panina reminded that in 2008, Saakashvili “had already led to the unleashing of a bloody clash between Georgia and South Ossetia, during which he had ordered to kill peaceful civilians and Russian peacekeepers in Tskhinvali”. “Now, once again, he is trying to make nations go against each other by provoking the sides of the conflict. After everything that Saakashvili did in South Ossetia, he has no moral right to act as an arbiter and state who is right and who is to blame,” Panina said.

The MP emphasized that in order to settle the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh both sides need “to listen to the voice of reason and keep odious subjects like Saakashvili as far away from this topic as possible”.