00:00Good morning. Welcome to Europe Today. Lovely to have you with us. Thank you. So the big story for
00:04us of course here today is Trump's Board of Peace. If you were still in office as President,
00:09would you sign up? I think that I know that our neighbours have signed up and I think that it's
00:15very important that the region, the Caucasus, stays united and stays present in all the formats where
00:24it can be and especially for Georgia it's very important to be a subject of international
00:29relations and not only an object which unfortunately we have become in the past period. And what should
00:36the EU do? Forgotten. You can see this big dispute now in the EU about who should go and who
00:41should
00:41not? Well that's their own subject which I'm not here to comment upon but I think that for a small
00:47country like Georgia which is faced with one enemy, Russia, that we know how it behaves, it's very
00:55important to be present in all the formats where it can have its voice heard. And you were at the
01:01Munich Security Conference. Marco Rubio was also there and he was describing the fact that the EU
01:07faces or Europe faces civilisation erasure. How do you interpret that? Well I think that it has been
01:14a conference. First of all I was not at the Munich Conference this year but I think that it is
01:21not
01:21true. It's not what happens in one day that suddenly Europe's and this civilisation is erased and on the
01:30contrary I think that what is happening is a wake-up of Europe which is discovering that together with
01:39its huge economic power, its huge civilisational power, it also needs force, strength and military
01:48power. In part that's also thanks to the wake-up call from the United States. So I think that all
01:55of
01:55that coming together is very good news for the Europeans and for the to be Europeans. And you
02:02mentioned the threat of Russia earlier. We know that talks took place yesterday in Geneva
02:06for two days trying to end that war in Ukraine. Do you think they will ever come to an end?
02:12I think of course it will come to an end one day. What is important is how it comes to
02:17an end
02:17because as neighbours of Russia, all the neighbours of Russia know that Russia has been a constant
02:24invader, a constant aggressor and a constant imperialist power that doesn't know where its borders
02:31stop. So what is very important out of these peace negotiations is the, of course, sovereignty
02:37of Ukraine, territorial integrity of Ukraine, and also the fact that Russia recognises elsewhere
02:45that it cannot occupy the territory of its neighbours. That's true for Abkhazia and Ossetia. That's true for
02:53North Dnepstria. Is Putin interested in peace, do you think, at these talks? He's never interested
02:59in peace. He has to be brought to peace by constraint. And I think that in that sense, probably,
03:09the uncertainty that Putin is probably experiencing with Trump and Trump's actions is the best ally for
03:16forcing him down to peace agreement. Maybe it's the best time that we have to see Russia having to
03:26recognise that somebody is both unpredictable and stronger than he is.
03:32And meanwhile in Georgia, what about the path towards EU membership? It's on ice now, talks are on hold.
03:36Yes, it's a very thick ice at this time, because everything that is happening within Georgia today is
03:44distancing us from the European past, from the European reforms. We have a capture of the state by
03:52Russia. We have a Russian model, in fact, putting, being put into place at a very rapid pace, and that's
03:59costless for Russia. Much more costless than, of course, the military intervention in Ukraine. With
04:07us, it's taking over institutions, democratic old principles. But there is a civil society, unlike in
04:16Russia or unlike in Belarus, a civil society that is fighting, that is resilient.
04:22And what more can you do here? What more can you do here? What more can you do? Be heard
04:28here. But I'm in
04:29Georgia. I'm not here. I'm going out just to have the voice of the Georgian people heard. More attention to
04:38Georgia, which is not easy at a time when there are so important and many crises around us. But it's
04:45still very
04:45important that we have the moral support, because the people that are fighting are fighting for a European
04:51democratic Georgia. And we think that it's important, not only for Georgians, but it's important for the future of a
04:59strong Europe, very present in the Caucasus, and also American partners.
05:06Okay. Salome, Serge Westfali. Thank you so much for being our guest this morning here on Europe Today.
Comments