MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Relations between Russia and Georgia are ‘heavy-handed’ and will hardly be restored under the current administration of Georgia, Head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the State Duma [Lower House of the Russian Parliament - TASS] Leonid Slutsky said in an interview with RT TV Channel.
"I think that relations will be restored piece by piece but this will hardly take place under the current Georgian administration," the parliamentarian said, expressing regret in respect of the incident in the Georgian parliament.
The Russian president’s decree banning flights to and from Georgia entered force on Monday. President Vladimir Putin signed the document following the unrest that erupted in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on June 20. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the flight ban was aimed at ensuring the safety of Russians who might run into danger in Georgia.
The protests in Georgia were sparked by an uproar over a session of the Inter-parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy hosted by the parliament. In accordance with an approved protocol, the head of Russia’s delegation Sergei Gavrilov, a member of the State Duma, took the Georgian parliament speaker’s seat, irking the Georgian opposition, whose activists disrupted the event and took to the streets. Protesters eventually tried to storm the parliament building.
