The United States on Tuesday strongly rejected Russia's foreign spy agency's accusations of U.S. plotting "regime change" in Georgia, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.
"It’s completely false," State Department's spokesperson Matthew Miller told a daily briefing. "It’s not the first time Russia has made allegations like that with respect to U.S. involvement in Georgia and other countries around the world that have been completely false, and have been absurd," he said.
Miller went on to add, "I would just point out the irony of the country, Russia, that is illegally occupying 20 percent of Georgia as we speak, making those absurd allegations about another country."
Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) provided no evidence for its assertion, but an SVR statement containing allegations that the Biden administration "has already developed a large-scale information campaign to discredit the ruling Georgian Dream party."
The move came at the time when Washington has been conducting a comprehensive review of its relationship with Georgia's Kremlin-backed government after they adopted a new law that critics feared would curb democratic freedoms. Separately on Monday, the EU also announced that Georgia’s accession to the Union had been halted, and some of the bloc’s financial support to the country has been frozen.
"Obviously, that is a decision made by the EU and something that they can more appropriately comment on. But I know that they have made clear, as we have made clear when it comes to our relationship with Georgia, that there would be consequences for Georgia’s democratic backsliding," Miller said on Tuesday when responding to TURAN's questions.
He also urged the Georgian Government to reverse its ‘troubling pattern of behavior’ by cracking down on legitimate democratic dissent. "Obviously we would oppose any crackdown on democratic dissent. That’s the point that we have been making for some time," he concluded.
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