Georgia’s fifth president, Salome Zourabichvili, traveled to Washington D.C. in a bid to convince President Donald Trump’s administration to pay attention to what’s happening in Tbilisi.
According to the Hill, she attended the inauguration, met with President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“I had the chance to tell Mr.Trump that this was a strategic region that cannot be forgotten by the United States,” Zourabichvili said last week, adding that he was receptive to the message.“Well, yes, in the sense that he knows Georgia, he has been to Georgia. He enjoyed having been to Georgia. So it was not an abstract moment.”
Trump planned to build a hotel in Batumi before abandoning the project in 2016.
“They cannot let this region go to Russia. That’s what we have to understand,” Zourabichvili said of her main message, adding, “what I expect is America to feel engaged in this region because otherwise it’s leading this region to Russia, to the Chinese.”
Her strategy is to secure high-profile meetings, especially in light of the upcoming Munich Security Conference.
She also hopes that sanctions introduced by the Biden administration, including those against Georgian Dream’s founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, remain intact.
Following parliamentary elections in Georgia that saw the pro-Russian Georgian Dream win in a vote that’s widely believed to be rigged, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets. In response, the government ordered a crackdown on the protesters and institutions, including the media and universities.
