Offi cial Tbilisi Condemns Putin's Meeting with De Facto Abkhazia Leader

Issue no: 1175 • AUGUST 9 - 12, 2019 • PUBLISHED TWICE WEEKLY

In this week’s issue...Politicians Worldwide Respond to 11th Anniversary of the August War

The Trump Shtick Ricochets in Georgia

National Geographic Team Visits Georgia to Prepare Publications

Why Do Georgian Customers Choose HUAWEI?

Batumi-Tbilisi International Fest "Night Serenades" to Celebrate 11th AnniversaryCULTURE PAGE 15

PRICE: GEL 2.50

NEWS PAGE 2

POLITICS PAGE 4

POLITICS PAGE 7

SOCIETY PAGE 12

SOCIETY PAGE 10

FOCUS ON THE AUGUST WAREx-President Saakashvili tells the tale as he remembers it PAGE 6

Continued on page 2

BY MARIAM MERABISHVILI

The DREAMLAND OASIS HOTEL Ajara will host a Georgian-Basque dinner prepared by Georgian and foreign chefs and organ-

ized by Gault&Millau Georgia on August 14.

Gault&Millau is a French restaurant guide founded by Henry Gault and Christian Millou in 1965 that covers 30 countries around the world today, including Georgia, since 2017. The spe-cifi cs of Gault&Millau work include the positive promotion of restaurants and chefs. The company's international tasters review restaurants with strictly defi ned guidelines which are harmo-nized and identical throughout the world. Restaurant reviews are based on an evaluation of food, service, decor and concept.

The best dishes of Georgian and Basque cuisine will be introduced to guests by renowned chefs from numer-ous countries:

Best Chef of 2019 G&M was awarded to Guram Baghdoshvili, who owns and is a chef in restaurants "Chveni" Tbilisi and "Chveni" Bakuriani. He worked in Portugal for 17 years and was the exec-utive chef of 25 restaurants of the famous Nosolo restaurant group. He taught at the Institute of Nutrition in Northern Portugal, and was a brand chef of Nicci Beach's three restaurants in Portugal. Guram Baghdoshvili is a member of a number of culinary competitions in Georgia, including the jury of the ‘Kitchen Wars.’

"Gault & Millau's recognition, for me, shows Georgia's gastronomic progress and development," Baghdoshvili notes.

Misha Avsajanishvili is a Georgian chef working in Ukraine and the brand chef in 12 restaurants, member of the Ukrainian Chefs Association, Associate Referee of the Culinary Championships, and jury member of the culinary com-petition Kitchen Wars.’

"Cooking for me is self-expression, self-actualization and a constant pursuit of novelty," Avsajanishvili says of his profession.

Gault&Millau’s Georgian-Basque Dinner

Saakashvili and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in Gori. August 2008. REUTERS

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 20192 NEWS

David Narimanishvili is a famous Georgian chef in Spain and Chef of MasterChef Spain. He learnt his pro-fession from world-renowned chefs in Spain and practiced in various award-winning restaurants.

Jorge Breton is a brand chef of La Sucursal and Vertical, and a multiple award-holder in the culinary sphere.

Breton has experience as a speaker in gastronomy and is Professor and Direc-tor of the Culinary Department of the Basque Culinary Center, and Strategic Director of ‘Cooking Clubater.’

Gastronomic Guide presentations and dinners will be attended by Gault&Millau hat chefs, Georgian chefs, restaurateurs, and representatives of the diplomatic corps, government and business.

Continued from page 1

Gault&Millau’s Georgian-Basque Dinner

BY NINI DAKHUNDARIDZE

Located in the municipality of Tkibuli, Tsutskhvati Cave is a place of ongoing expeditions organized and carried out by International Archeological

Expedition of the Georgian National Museum, which reports that new dis-

coveries there show Paleolithic Era lay-ers characteristic to Homo Sapiens.

The practical study of Tsutskhvati Cave began in the 20th century with an ini-tiative put forward by the Geographical Institute of Georgian Science Academy.

In the years of 1970-71 and 1974-75, stone weapons and animal bones dating back 400 – 40 thousand years were found in the cave, giving stimuli to further inves-tigations.

Near to Tsutskhvati Cave, in the so-called ‘Bronze Cave’, a molar of a Nean-derthal child was discovered – recent fi ndings claim that the tooth dates back to 50,000 BC.

Small scale expeditions took place in 1998-1999 and 2003-2004 and still, Tsut-skhvati Cave, for the most part, was not studied fundamentally.

Multidisciplinary studies have been enforced since 2017 by the International Archeological Expedition of the Georgian National Museum, with the support of the Shota Rustaveli Georgian National Scientifi c Fund, under the scope of pro-ject “Neanderthals in the South Caucasus.”

Among the new discoveries, a site of a former settlement from the Chalcolithic Era was excavated in the “Bronze Cave”.

The scientifi c head of the expedition is Nikoloz Tsakaridze.

Tsutskhvati Cave is a protected terri-tory; under the Rule on Protected Ter-ritories of the Ministry of Environmen-tal Protection and Agriculture.

Recent Discoveries in Tsutskhvati Cave

BY ANA DUMBADZE

This year marks the 11th anni-versary of the Russia-Geor-gia war when the Russian Federation invaded the country and occupied two

Georgian regions, Abkhazia and Tskh-invali, so-called South Ossetia.

The war lasted for fi ve days (7–12 August). These are the most tragic days in the modern history of Georgia.

Politicians from all over the world have once again responded to the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war, all expressing support to Georgia and emphasizing that Russia occupied the country in August 2008.

Elizabeth Rood, acting US Ambassador to Georgia, went to Tserovani, a settle-ment of IDPs from the breakaway region Tskhinvali (South Ossetia), on the 11th

Politicians Worldwide Respond to 11th Anniversary of the August War

anniversary of the August war.She once again pointed out that the US

will proudly continue to support Geor-gia in the future.

"The United States proudly continues to stand with Georgia in caring for those communities displaced by the war and helping to ensure they have a dignifi ed life here until they can safely return to their homes," she stated.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Linas Linkevicius, tweeted: ”Eleven years since the premeditated aggression against Georgia, Russia con-tinues creeping annexation and occupies 20% of Georgia's territory. Unfortunately, lessons were not learned, Crimea and Donbas followed. Appeasement is never an option.”

Latvia’s Foreign Minister Edgars Rink-evics also expressed support to Georgia. “As we mark the 11th Anniversary since the beginning of Russia’s agression against

Georgia, I reiterate Latvia’s unwavering support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia, Russia must end the occupation of parts of the Georgian territory and withdraw its troops,” he tweeted.

A statement was also released by the Latvian Foreign Ministry: “We remind you of the Russian aggression carried out in Georgia in 2008. Latvia strongly sup-ports Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recog-nized borders,” reads the statement.

The August 2008 war was assessed as "occupation of Georgia by Russia" by British parliamentarian Jonathan Djanogly.

“11yrs passed since Russian illegal occu-pation of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia. Let us show continued support to Georgia's sovereignty, terri-torial integrity, European &euro-Atlan-tic aspirations,” he tweeted.

Image source: futbolgrad.com

OP-ED BY ZAZA JGARKAVA

The occupied Tskhinvali has resumed discussions on uniting with the Russian Federation. The so-called president of the occupied

regime, Anatoly Bibilov, says that he can’t imagine Ossetian people living in two separate states: “In such circumstances, Ossetian people won’t see any develop-ment,” he said at a press conference held on the 11th anniversary of the August 2008 war. Instead of the war, a large part of the conference was dedicated to the discussion of a period in recent history, the one that Russian President Putin addressed a few weeks ago when he offered the world his version of Georgian history.

Everything started on July 9, when, though the country was waiting for a new economic embargo from Putin, sur-prisingly he started talking about the 1920s, for some reason, discussing the developments that took place in Tskh-invali during a military operation and recalling the death of Ossetians at the time: “Such actions are called genocide these days,” explained Putin. It seems this talk served as an inspiration not only for Bibilov, but for the MPs of the Rus-sian Duma and, in one of the upcoming

sessions, Russians are set to discuss a statement sent them from the occupied Tskhinvali. The statement apparently repeats word by word what President Putin described in his public statement broadcasted on TV on July 9. Chairman of the Federal Assembly of Russia, Vyacheslav Volodin, declared that the letter received from Tskhinvali has been accepted and that it will soon be dis-cussed in the Committee. “We have care-fully considered the issue of recognizing the genocide that the Georgian govern-ment organized against the Ossetians in the 1920s. And during the next commit-tee session comprised of Duma offi cials, the chairmen of all fractions and com-mittees, we will discuss this statement,” Volodin told the media.

Yes, it is truly hard to believe that the Russian Duma is attempting to falsify Georgian history on the legislative level, even more so as it was a participant in that event. In the 1920s, an agreement has been signed between Russia and Georgia. On May 7th, Soviet Russia, the predecessor of today’s Duma, signed a document which recognized the inde-pendence of Georgia and its territorial sovereignty. The document does not contain a word about the Ossetian peo-ple, nor South Ossetia as such. So, what actually happened in the 1920s that so caught the attention of President Putin, then the occupied government of Tskh-

invali and fi nally the Russian Duma?On March 23, 1920 a regional assembly

of the Bolsheviks of Caucasus took place, headed by Sergo Orjonikidze. The assem-bly discussed a single issue: the plan to overthrow the Independent Republic of Georgia through a Bolshevik rebellion that was to start in Tskhinvali. In line with this, the 11th Army of Bolsheviks had to cross the Georgian-Azerbaijani border and head towards Tbilisi. As planned, the Bolshevik’s did cross the border, and so the rebellion of Tskhinvali began. The Ossetian Bolshevik’s expelled the government representatives of the fi rst republic and declared Bokshevik rule covering the territory from Oni to Dusheti. The rebels held their positions in Tskhinvali, awaiting the attack of the 11th Army against Tbilisi. The govern-ment at the time evaluated the attempt as an anti-governmental action, rather than a rebellion organized by an ethnic minority group and initiated appropri-ate measures. At the time, a few smaller scale Bolshevik demonstrations took place in other regions of Georgia, but the fate of the Tskhinvali rebels was decided in Poland. The Bolsheviks were brutally defeated at the Polish front and lost half of the Ukrainian territory.

Both the 11th Army attack and the rebel-lion of the Ossetian Bolsheviks failed. As the Russian government is wont to do, here too it left the rebels that had

been incited in the fi rst place by the Kremlin, to the hands of fate. Moreover, it signed an agreement with the oppo-nent party, in this case the Government of Georgia, and recognized its sover-eignty. Afterwards, the government of the fi rst republic, headed by Valiko Jugheli, suppressed the Bolshevik rebel-lion across the whole of Georgia, includ-ing Tkhinvali region. And it was those very Ossetian Bolshevik rebels who died during this incident, that President Putin mentioned in his speech. And it is in fact the political stance of the group that Putin wants to falsely show as an ethnic problem in his attempt to blame Georgia for the “ethnic cleansing” and “crime against humanity.”

That same “genocide” card was what Putin wanted but failed to “play” during the 2008 August war. 3000 peaceful Ossetian civilians that he declares died during the war have yet to be identifi ed by any international organization, not to mention that “large scale violent mur-der on the grounds of ethnic cleansing.” As opposed to that number, the statistics voiced by Bibilov during his last press-conference mention 500 people, adding that this loss is fairly high for a small nation of Ossetians. Clearly, what Krem-lin failed to declare as genocide in 2008, it is now trying to do using the events of 1920, all in its attempt to offer the international community a legislative argument for the current occupation.

The Tskhinvali Truth

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 2019 3NEWS

Georgian industrial company AiGROUP has responded to the 11th anniversary of the 2008 Russia-Georgia War and expressed condolences to the families of soldiers killed in the war. At the

initiative of AiGroup, the spouse and minors of military offi cers and representatives of other law enforcement agencies killed in the August War and other peacekeeping missions will be given a one-week holiday in the mountainous resort of Baku-riani as a gift.

“It’s been 11 years since the August 2008 war. We want to show respect for the fallen heroes and sup-port their families and children, the people they used to care about and protect the most. The her-oism of the Georgian soldiers is just as precious for us as it is for their families, and we are proud of it just as they are. We will gift a one-week holi-day to Bakuriani to the families of the heroes who died in the August War and in military missions and who had minor children at the time.”

Through this project, we would like to thank our heroes and their families for their dedication,” said Kakha Guledani, Chairman of the Board of Direc-tors of AiGROUP.

The project includes 85 families of military and

law enforcement personnel who were killed dur-ing the August 2008 War and in peacekeeping mis-sions. The implementation period of the program is the second half of August and September. The company AiGROUP will cover the fee of staying in a hotel, as well as expenses of meals and trans-portation.

Through this project, AiGROUP also responds to the campaign “Spend Your Summer in Georgia”, which itself envisages support of the resorts where a lack of tourists is especially notable. Bakuriani is one of the most famous summer and winter resorts in Georgia, where local and foreign tourists spend time with their children.

AiGROUP is the fi rst industrial group in Georgia to face the challenges of the 21st century globally. The establishment of a healthy, environmentally clean business is the main direction of all the com-panies united under the name AiGROUP.

The subsidiary companies of AiGROUP: AiCAR, AiPOWER, AiENERGY and AiPRODUCTION offer customers an electric car sharing service, creating a network of smart urban charging sta-tions for electric transport, generating and real-izing electricity through solar panels, and produc-tion of electric cars in Kutaisi.

#madlobasakartvelostvis (thank you for the Country they saved for us) - AiGROUP’s Message to Families of Heroes Killed in August 2008 War

BY ANA DUMBADZE

The Delegation of the European Union to Georgia released a statement in connection with the 11th anniversary of the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

“Eleven years have passed since the August 2008 confl ict between the Russian Federation and Geor-gia. During this time, the Russian Federation has not only maintained but increased its military pres-ence in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in viola-tion of international law and its commitments under the 12 August 2008 agreement.

"Fundamental human rights of the confl ict-affected population continue to be violated, including through restrictions on freedom of movement by so-called ’borderization’, temporary closures of crossing points and illegal detentions and through the violation of the right to safe and dignifi ed return

of internally displaced persons and refugees."The confl icts in Georgia have caused displace-

ment and trauma to the lives of thousands of peo-ple and that legacy now affects generations. The EU welcomes and supports sincere and apolitical efforts on all sides to address humanitarian and security issues.

"Since the 1990s, the European Union has striven to help fi nd a peaceful resolution to the confl icts in Georgia. These efforts were substantially stepped up 11 years ago and continue to this day. The Euro-pean Union will continue these efforts, including through the activities of the EU Special Repre-sentative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, its engagement as co-chair in the Geneva International Discussions, and the continued pres-ence of the EU Monitoring Mission, the only inter-national monitoring mission on the ground.

"The European Union will continue to support the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia within its internationally recognized borders,” reads the statement.

EU Releases Statement on August 2008 War

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 20194 POLITICS

Image source: wikipedia

BY THEA MORRISON

Official Tbilisi has con-demned the meeting of Ru s s i a n P r e s i d e n t Vladimir Putin with Raul Khajimba, de facto Presi-

dent of Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, held in Sochi three days ago.

Georgia’s State Minister for Reconcili-ation and Civic Equality Ketevan Tsikhe-lashvili said this is not the fi rst meeting between Putin and Khajimba and empha-sized that Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereignty has the absolute support of the international community.

“This was not a big surprise, as since 2008, Russian infl uence has been stead-ily increasing in both occupied territories of Georgia. In Abkhazia and the Tskh-invali region, in fact, all areas are under the exclusive control of Russia, and such meetings only help to increase this infl u-ence,” she said.

The Minister noted this is not a posi-tive development for the local popula-tion and society in Abkhazia.

“From year to year, we more often hear of the very critical attitude of locals towards the Russian policy, which is actually against the identity of the local population,” she said.

Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) also condemned Putin and Khajimba’s recent meeting. Spokesper-son for the MFA of Georgia Vladimir Constantinidi said Russia's move is directed against Georgia's statehood, sovereignty and territorial integrity and

grossly ignores the fundamental norms of international law.

Constantinidi stressed the meeting represents another attempt to legitimize the occupation regime and also empha-sized that the international community fully supports Georgia's sovereignty.

The MFA spokesperson said that the meeting was held on the eve of the 11th anniversary of the Russian-Georgian war

that took place in 2008 and brought seri-ous consequences for Georgia.

“Despite similar efforts from Russia, the international community will never tolerate the illegal occupation of Geor-gia's inseparable regions. The interna-tional community strongly supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia and the non-recognition policy of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which

we can clearly see in public statements and documents of individual countries and international organizations, as well as in their active steps to promote peace-ful resolution of the confl ict," he said.

Abkhazian media reports that at the meeting with Khajimba, the President of Russia discussed the implementation of previously outlined plans, as well as social development projects and mutual

cooperation issues.The sides also discussed the issue of

so called “presidential elections” in occupied Abkhazia, which are scheduled for August 26.

“I do hope that the elections will be organized strictly in line with democratic principles and will contribute to further stabilization in the republic, both in the economic and political sense," Putin told the de facto leader of Abkhazia.

On his side, Khajimba thanked Putin for the assistance received from Russia which, he said, gives Abkhazia the oppor-tunity to develop economically.

The previous meeting of Putin and Khajimba took place in late August 2018 together with the leader of another occu-pied region of Georgia, South Ossetia - Anatoly Bibilov, to celebrate the “recog-nition of independence” of the two regions, which were occupied by Russia during the August 2008 war.

That day, the leaders of Russia and breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia held trilateral “talks” in Moscow.

In the aftermath of the August 2008 War, the Russian Federation occupies 20% of Georgian territory and is slowly moving the administrative boundary line, pushing further into Georgia.

Russia recognizes the "independence” of breakaway Abkhazia and South Osse-tia along with only four other countries - Syria, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Nauru.

The remaining international commu-nity affi rms that the two regions are integral parts of Georgia and call on Russia to revoke its recognition of the breakaway regions and withdraw its forces from the Georgian territory.

Image source: Apsnypress

Offi cial Tbilisi Condemns Putin's Meeting with De Facto Abkhazia Leader

OP-ED BY EMIL AVDALIANI

Eleven years have passed since the short Georgian-Russian war started on August 7-8 in 2008. As every discussion on who started the war gen-

erally is, the Georgian-Russian one too is about fi nding moral grounds for military actions which both sides took at the time.

Morality in geopolitics, and the Geor-gian-Russian confl ict is indeed caused by pure geopolitical calculations, is at most times a superfl uous thing. All these years the Russians have been trying to convince the world and the public inside the country that the Russian military moves actions and subsequent recogni-tion of the independence of the Abk-hazia and Tskhinvali regions were the only possible and correct actions to be taken. The Georgians also have their dilemmas: some marginal political fi g-ures still believe that it was the Georgian government that was most to blame for the catastrophe of 2008. Though close geographically, these diverging narra-tives and the constant need to prove one’s own truth says a lot about how far apart Georgia and Russia have grown in the past decade.

11 years since the war and it is still unclear what Russia has gained from its military and diplomatic actions since 2008. True, military build-up in Abk-hazia and Tskhinvali Region limited Tbilisi's ability to become an EU/NATO member state. Moreover, Russian inter-

vention into Georgia in 2008 also showed the West how far Moscow can go if a strategic decision is made to draw Geor-gia into the alliances. At the time (August-September 2008) those seemed to be long-term (strategic) victories for Mos-cow. In international relations and geo-political calculations, you can stop a country from attaining the aims harm-ful to you, but in the long run you will be unable to reverse the process by forceful actions alone: you have to pro-vide a counter-policy to turn an unfriendly state into an amenable neigh-bor.

Put all of this into the Russian case. More than a decade has passed since 2008, only a few not-so-important states recognized Georgia's territories as inde-pendent entities. The Georgian public is overwhelmingly anti-Russian, the last hopes of a grand geopolitical bargain - the return of the territories in exchange for reversing EU/NATO aspirations - have disappeared among the Georgian public, and support for western institu-tions so far has only increased.

In the end, though Moscow waged a reasonably costly war in 2008, took and still experiences a diplomatic burden for its moves against the West, and has yet to attain its grand geopolitical goal of reversing Georgia's pro-western course. Politicians in Moscow, at least strategists behind the scenes, all under-stand that Georgia's persistence, which seems naive today, might turn into seri-ous business if Russia's geopolitical positions worsen elsewhere in Eurasia.

Indeed, there are signs that Russian infl uence is set to diminish further in

the former Soviet space as the country's economy is unlikely to be attractive to the neighboring states. Imagine a sce-nario where Russian internal problems (Putin's upcoming succession, economic downturns, China's rise, stronger Ukraine, etc.) weigh ever stronger upon the Russian decision-makers in the 2020s, then Georgia's western aspira-tions might become more concrete - it will be easier for the West to make a strategic decision to draw Tbilisi into

EU/NATO.Overall, Russia defi nitely gained sig-

nifi cant results in 2008, but in the long run it did not change the strategic pic-ture in the South Caucasus, though it did produce a grand design for geopo-litical domination in north Eurasia: years after the war, Moscow initiated its Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) to draw its neighbors into one economic space - a prerequisite for building a world power. Ideally, it should have

attracted Russia’s major neighbors and it would have served the people of the former Soviet space economically. But Moscow failed to get Ukraine and other states involved: without Kiev, the EEU, if not dead, is at least a marginal project. This means that Russian policies towards Georgia and the wider South Caucasus remain the same as before 2008 - keep-ing foreign powers out of the region, while failing to provide an alternative vision for Tbilisi.

Did Russia Really Win in the 2008 August War?

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 20196 POLITICS

INTERVIEW BY VAZHA TAVBERIDZE

Why has he become dis-illusioned with the West? Was he pro-voked into starting a war with Russia? Why

did Georgia not have any defensive strat-egy whatsoever with an invasion from Russia impending? Where did he miscal-culate Putin and how costly did that mis-take prove to be? Why does he attribute part of the blame for not preventing (and then not stopping) the August War to the "German & French Game"? Did he really offer to abandon NATO aspirations to have a better relationship with Russia? The former President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, laid all bare about the 2008 August War in a wide-ranging interview with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).

“The thing is, the West is motivated by several instincts and one of the main instincts is appeasement. They always want to delay the problem, they always want to refer to the past, to the future, anything but the present. Nobody wants trouble and the [Western] politicians’ basic instinct is to keep trouble away, to ignore it or to pretend they don't see it and that it’s not real.”

IS THERE A SENSE OF PERSONAL DISILLUSIONMENT? HAVE YOU BECOME DISAPPOINTED WITH THE WEST OVER THE YEARS?Yes and no. At the beginning I was very idealistic about the West and I thought that it was motivated by exactly the same values as I am, something special based on the rule of law, democracy of society. That’s not to say it’s completely gone - these are still the main principles. In the West, you can always appeal to conscious-ness, but they might not always hear you. Are they susceptible to manipulation or self-manipulation? Sure. But are they still the best ones available? Yes. That's how I look at it now, I look much more soberly. I think that they can be very hypocritical, they have double standards, they also have this attitude which I think might be a remnant of colonialism, but they genu-inely think that the smaller newcomers at the table are not supposed to succeed. Henry Kissinger told Sarah Palin once in a private conversation that made its way to me, that ‘Saakashvili is like a small-time player that comes to a poker table of big players with no cards in his pocket to play.’

WOULD YOU SAY IT’S QUITE AN ACCURATE TAKE ON WHAT YOU WERE ACTUALLY DOING? In a way, yes, but look, we had cards; the thing is they didn’t want to acknowledge the cards we had; we were the biggest soft power in this huge area of world: Eurasia. That's the point; that's what they never realized. Their take is that nobody's supposed to create standards in our part of the world, standards are only created in the West and if you create your own standards in this part of the world which are at all similar to Western standards, it won’t work. You can just take their fran-chise, you cannot create your own polit-ical McDonald's, McDonald's can only come from the West; that's the point. That's what I only realized through prac-tice: that they want you to be successful, but they don't want you to be too suc-cessful. We, on the other hand, we’d go in and say, ‘Oh, by the way, we have the best business registration, fastest customs in the world, we are the safest country in Europe.’

WOULD YOU SAY YOU WERE CONSIDERED COCKY AND IMPETUOUS BECAUSE OF THAT APPROACH? Yes. One Western ambassador when I was in Georgia said, ‘Saakashvili has the pharaonic projects of Batumi and the houses of justice: he wants to be a phar-aoh, he just doesn't want to be a normal leader.’

DO YOU THINK THAT

PERCEPTION HARMED JUST YOU? OR DID IT HARM THE COUNTRY AS WELL?The country, for sure, but what can we do? We cannot just claim to be lucky dummies, being successful.

DOES THIS ALSO EXPLAIN WHY YOUR RECENT FOREIGN POLICY ARTICLE, WHERE YOU ARGUED THAT THE NEXT THREAT FROM RUSSIA WOULD TARGET NON-NATO MEMBER COUNTRIES, WAS DISMISSED BY MANY WESTERN POLICY-MAKERS? WHY DO YOU THINK YOU WERE LABELLED A DOOMSAYER?It’s because they never want to hear the uncomfortable truth. They did not want to hear uncomfortable truths about the possible invasion of Georgia and they did not want to hear about Crimea, Donbas; they don't want to hear the truth because if you hear the truth and then you seri-ously start to discuss it, then you have to act and they don’t want to act. The reason I said it about Scandinavia is that I know Putin; he is desperate now, he's looking for some kind of way out, to prolong his reign. He already tried everything else, and Putin is always increasing his red lines - he thinks, fi rst we went to Georgia, an easy target, a small target, then we went to Ukraine, in parallel going into Syria. Russia goes to the places where the West wants to engage but not fully, and then they engage fully and that's how they outsmart the West every time. If Russia attacks non-NATO member Scan-dinavian countries, what will the West do? Not much. Not even attack back. They don’t want to attack because it’s risky. We are not talking about a full-blown inva-sion here. Will the population of Sweden really fi ght for some small island and risk thousands of lives for that small island? I don't think so. and will the West engage, will NATO come to their help if Russians just take like a small, mini-Faulklands somewhere in that area?

DO YOU REALLY THINK SEIZING SOMETHING IN SCANDINAVIA WOULD BE A BITE PUTIN WOULD BE ALLOWED TO CHEW?Well, it doesn’t fall under Article 5 and the population of a small Scandinavian country will not risk their livelihoods and future and everything for a small piece of land, and even if they do, they will be defeated. I remember the head of Swe-den’s general staff saying they would be defeated by Russia within ten days. Hav-ing this in mind, to the pragmatic Swedes that’s really not much of a choice: are we willing to be defeated [with] 20,000 peo-ple killed or are we just going to go for diplomatic, legal means to solve this issue? I think it’s obvious what path they would choose.

LET’S GO BACK TO THE CHIEF TOPIC OF OUR CONVERSATION, THE 2008 AUGUST WAR. AN OVERWHELMING CONSENSUS AMONG WESTERN SCHOLARS AND POLITICIANS, NOT TO MENTION THE CURRENT GEORGIAN GOVERNMENT, IS THAT YOU WERE PROVOKED BY RUSSIA AND FELL FOR IT, GOADED INTO STARTING A WAR. DO YOU AGREE? No, it’s not true. Crimea clearly proved there are two scenarios: either surrender fully or fi ght. There is no third scenario; when they're already in, who started the war? The [post 2008 war] Tagliavini report played on this in a very nasty way. They said Russian troops were already in but the confl ict was started by Georgia; excuse me, what do you mean by troops were in? What the hell is that? Is that an accept-able thing? Well, troops were already in Crimea and confl ict never started because the Ukrainians didn't fi ght, so does that make it an invasion or not? Shouldn’t you resist invasion? It's quite simple.

WHAT I THINK THEY ARE REFERRING TO IS THAT AS BAD AS THE SITUATION MIGHT HAVE BEEN BEFORE, YOUR

DECISION TO TAKE CONTROL OF TSKHINVALI WAS WHAT LED TO A FULL-SCALE WAR AND INVASION. AND THAT WAS EXACTLY WHAT RUSSIA WANTED YOU TO DO.Russia’s scenario was very clear. It was articulated, not speculated. [Eduard] ‘Kokoity [the then de facto president of South Ossetia] said, ‘We will clean our valleys of bandits’ - their scenario was a full-scale invasion but under the disguise of Ossetian forces fi ghting some locals, and if we at a certain moment started to resist, and it would be hard for us not to resist because there were pictures of people being killed and slaughtered and cleansed, that would trigger some kind of reaction and they would follow the victorious Kokoity all the way to Tbilisi to secure South Ossetia’s independence. Had we not done anything, ok, they could have stopped there, but it would damage us anyway, because a full-scale invasion was on the cards. There was no good scenario for us in this.

WAS THAT A SCENARIO WHEN THERE WAS NO OTHER OPTION BUT TO FIGHT? COULD NOT RESPONDING PERHAPS HAVE BEEN THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS?From my perspective, if you don't fi ght, at least you try. And we made other mis-takes. Another mistake was that we were not ready: our fear had become chronic and we were not ready for what happened.

WAS THAT PARANOIA?No… it was very tense; later, at a certain moment we started to tell ourselves it might be okay now, because in spring we were very close to war, then there was lots of mediation and then at a certain moment, we let ourselves think it was ok… you know, it's a small country, people have to take holidays, offi cers have to go on holiday, government has to rest. I myself was very close to taking over Tbi-lisi Airport that night, August 7. I went to the airport twice and I came back twice; I was supposed to be leaving for China. We were going to Beijing for the Olym-pics; the tension had become so chronic that there was shooting, subsiding, shoot-ing, again subsiding and then we said ok, that's normal, nothing new there, I’d bet-ter go to Beijing and see the leaders. I’d better go and complain.

IF THE TENSION HAD BECOME CHRONIC, IF YOU AND THE ESTABLISHMENT BEGAN TO COPE WITH IT, THEN WHAT PROMPTED THE DECISION REGARDING TSKHINVALI? Because in the evening they started shoot-ing en masse, that’s why I stayed. The plan before that was to put them on standby before trying to take anything back and for me to go to Beijing and say, look we have the situation - to Bush or somebody - we have this situation, please interfere. I tried to call everyone and nobody would pick up; only Jaap De Hoopscheffer, then-NATO Secretary General, who spoke to me on an open line and I couldn't say much on an open line. I just described the general situation. I tried to call Frank-Walter Steinmeier, then-German Minister of Foreign Affairs; he was on holiday. I tried to call someone in Washington and nobody was there. [Senior Offi cial] Michael Carpenter was the only one who was on duty in the state department; then I managed to speak with Carl Bildt, the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs and that was it. We weren’t really sure of anything.

ONE OF THE MORE SEVERE ACCUSATIONS OFTEN AIMED AT YOU IS THAT YOU BOMBED A SLEEPING TSKHINVALI. LOOKING BACK, IS THERE ANY OTHER WAY YOU WISH YOU HAD GONE ABOUT THAT? When you launch a military operation, it’s military protocol: you don’t make decisions on the political fi eld. When you’re fi ghting an uphill battle, it’s the military that calls the shots. Certainly, they had been instructed to uphold

humanitarian values. The Human Rights Watch report clearly says that when Geor-gians entered some Ossetian villages, they said, ‘Don’t worry, Misha [Saakash-vili] told us not touch you.’ But that was the attitude, they knew that they had to uphold norms but otherwise it was up to them what fi repower to use against tar-gets, you cannot control it politically. The problem was we couldn't get to those valleys which were under attack any more – the road was blocked, so the solution was to clear a way to that road and if you go through mountains to do it, you are a clear target: GRU troops [Russian special forces] were on the main hill and could target that road easily.

WHATEVER THE GOAL MIGHT HAVE BEEN, WHAT HAPPENED IN TSKHINVALI WAS SEEN AS A MAJOR GEORGIAN OFFENSIVE. WOULD YOU NOT THINK THAT LAUNCHING A MAJOR OFFENSIVE WOULD BE A TIPPING POINT? No, because it had a clear target and fur-thermore it was in clear response to all their major offences because what they did was also major offensive; they attacked our troops, they attacked our villages with all the fi repower that they could use against a peaceful population. What we did was an adequate response to their major offensive. Russian troops were attacking from several directions with massed fi repower, GRU troops were coordinating with the so-called South Ossetia troops - it was already an offen-sive. The only way we could stop it, con-sidering we didn't have much presence on the ground, was artillery. At least that's what the military decided.

AND WHAT WAS THE EXPECTED RESULT?To move fast through the city and valleys and get to the area where we could lock the road and block their further advance-ment. The Roki tunnel was already teem-ing with Russian tanks, so we had to pass through Tskhinvali, but we were late: the Russians had already started what turned out to be an invasion. They were already in the tunnel and they were in village of Java waiting. So, if you want to talk about our mistakes, our mistake was to act too late and do too little. In the end, we did whatever we could, but we were stalled and we had just some pieces of the big-ger picture, at that time all we had to act upon was merely pieces of information.

THE LATE ROBERT ASMUS’ EXCELLENT BOOK ABOUT THE 2008 WAR MAKES THE STRIKING POINT THAT GEORGIA AND YOUR GOVERNMENT HAD NO DEFENSE STRATEGY IN THE CASE OF WAR. IF YOU HAD SO LITTLE INFORMATION, HOW HARD MIGHT IT HAVE BEEN TO ENVISAGE THAT SOME SORT OF DEFENSE STRATEGY WAS NEEDED?Because, politically, our approach towards South Ossetia was very clear: soft power, we don't fi ght there, and we never thought the Russians would start fi ghting there. South Ossetia is like a chessboard: you have Georgian villages, Ossetian villages, and they are so intertwined that we though they wouldn’t really think about starting a big scale operation there, it made no sense. Abkhazia, on the other hand, was a clear-cut case, because it's an empty territory, they can go through. And that’s where I miscalculated over Putin because our thinking was that they would never go for Tbilisi, and we were also convinced by our Western friends about that.

WHO WERE THOSE WESTERN FRIENDS?Everyone. Everyone said the Russians

would never invade us; Condi Rice always said that; she said I know the Russians, I skated in Russia as a young girl, I went to Moscow, MGIMO [the Moscow State Institute of International Relations]; I know them: they will provoke you but they will never do anything. The only guy who said otherwise was Steinmeier; Stein-meier put this to us very bluntly, now that I think of it. It was an assessment of Ger-man intelligence based on their internal sources in Moscow because Steinmeier came to Georgia in a very hasty way and he was nervous, you could see that, he just came because he thought an invasion would happen and he wanted to show that beforehand. At least they tried to do something and he told us, in the German way, that there would be an invasion.

WHEN WAS THAT?When he came for his shuttle mission; then he went to see [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov and then he came to see the Abkhazian town of Gali; he came again back to Batumi and told us that. We were sitting in a restaurant with several members of our government and one of them asked him a question, ‘Mr Minister, will you help us bring interna-tional peacekeepers into both our confl ict zones?’ Steinmeier puts his fork down and says, ‘Guys, what peacekeepers are you talking about? You’ll soon have a large-scale war here.’ And we were, like, what? [Steinmeier said] ‘I'll tell you how it will happen there will be shooting between you and them all the time, in the past they've stopped but this time they will not: they will shoot back and they will shoot back more. And at a certain point you will have to go in and retaliate and then Russians will hit you with their full force and then there'll be full-scale war; the only thing we can do is to sepa-rate it.’ He described it in very precise terms. Then there was the Russian Ambas-sador in the EU, who was good friends with the member of the European Parlia-ment Elmar Brok, and Brok told me at the Yalta Conference in July 2008 that he had mentioned to this Ambassador that he was planning to visit Georgia in Sep-tember to try and solve the situation somehow. And the Ambassador up and tells him ‘Elmar, September is too late, if you want to go, go now.’ Elmar, being a smart guy, understood the clear hint given to him and asked me, ‘Are the Russians planning something or what?’

YET YOU STILL THOUGHT THAT RUSSIA WOULD NOT GO SO FAR.No, because many others told us no, no, no, don’t worry. But let us look at their timeline, what they did. They blocked us in NATO but then they said let it be decided in the December ministerial [meeting]; so they gave Russia this time framework, the Germans and French, to do something. And Russia had the moti-vation to act because there was a chance we could have gotten the MAP in Decem-ber and basically the Germans gave them the greenlight by saying ‘okay, we are postponing till December.’

SO, RUSSIA GOT A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY?Yeah, it was a kind of German-Russian game; I don't think Germans wanted war, of course, but they at least gave the Rus-sians some leeway to do what they did.

See Part 2 in Monday’s GT Business newspaper.

"I Should Have Shouted Louder" - Saakashvilion the August 2008 War, Part 1

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 2019 7POLITICS

Image source: nbcnews.com

OP-ED BY NUGZAR B. RUHADZE

What on earth could an American president have to do with the situation in Georgia? A lot! And here is the

catch: in the fi rst place, American pop culture has been amazingly infl uential worldwide over time, and Georgia is no exclusion from the rule. Suffi ce to say that America has uniformed billions of men and women in blue jeans and T-shirts around the globe; American talent has made the whole world play and listen to jazz. On top of that, the American dollar has been the dominant currency in the world’s fi scal organism since America was introduced as a nation; the tentacles of American capitalism widely and effec-tively spreading all over the place; the American military power has become an omnipresent and omnipotent pres-ence on earth; America has turned into an informational force, dictating to humans what, where, when and how to do the things they do, and lastly, Amer-ica has acquired a fi nal say in all pivotal international decisions, the world desir-ing to stand up against it but not being able to do so.

This is the overall background that any US president would enjoy when com-pelled and willing to demonstrate the American clout over other nations, Geor-gia included, although very fl imsily. President Trump is a vivid case of that

power show. The electoral battle cry differs from president to president in the States. For instance, the insipid and watery Obama campaign wanted to attract the constituency with the prom-ise of redistributing the American wealth so that everybody would get a piece of the cherished pie, but the post-Obama conservative wannabe Donald Trump made a well-targeted shot at a fi ery mor-alistic idea that America is fi rst . . . and he won the case.

Notwithstanding all kinds of contro-versial judgments against the American multifaceted presence in Georgia, the Trump political catchword was but guar-anteed to have a sharp effect on the aver-age Georgian heart and mind. Just imag-ine translating the American slogan ‘America First’ into Georgian, and then adapting it to Georgia’s spiritual reality: ‘Georgia First’. This could trigger a bil-low of the Georgian dormant but still impulsively vibrant patriotism, which, if accordingly nursed and channeled, could turn the country upside down. I call this a refl ection of Trumpism in our little land of social and political drama. Trump’s image and action, his style and approach encourage the idea of main-taining traditionalism in the land where family values are untouchable and sacred, but currently at risk.

Trump’s treatment of the American mainstream media and his attitude towards the way the nongovernmental organizations work and behave has ruined in Georgia the myth about the unques-tionable righteousness of media and

unconditional political honesty of the nonprofi ts. The Trump manner of doing politics has ricocheted in Georgia’s direc-tion to somehow modify the public approach to the unreserved style of action of minorities like the gay community, unbridled freedom of human behavior and totally uncontrolled limits of the freedom of speech. Understandably, after two hundred years of the Russian impe-rial dominance and seventy years of soviet depression, the people of Georgia have delighted in the open air of freedom and independence, not even giving a

second thought to the idea that freedom never comes by itself – it is always accom-panied by the strings of citizen respon-sibilities before the nation and its indi-vidual members.

The golden rule of a civilized society is not only the unbridled fl aunting of the banners of freedom of speech, freedom of behavior and freedom of conscience; civility dictates persistently that one’s own freedom in anything should not limit the freedom of others. The stand-ing conservatism of America is currently holding up this particular principle of

interaction in a normal society, repre-senting a good sample of behavioral model for our Georgia too. This is the good infl uence of the West, although the western neoliberal waves of lifestyle often get stuck right in the middle of those good old conservative ways.

In a word, Trump’s traditionalism, mixed with his conservatism, has turned into a great reminder for Georgia that it is not just the unreasonably boundless freedom in a neoliberal style that rules the world but certain other well-weath-ered philosophies of life too.

The Trump Shtick Ricochets in Georgia

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 20198 BUSINESS

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The Georgian ice cream par-lor network Luca Polare is expanding by opening its 15th branch in Tbilisi.

Another spot of delicious coffee and the best ice cream has just appeared at 9 Kazbegi Avenue.

In 2008, a small ice cream parlor was opened on Leselidze Street, in the area of 20 square meters. It was the fi rst branch of Luca Polare.

The Georgian brand is now represented in three cities across Georgia, with 10 branches in Tbilisi, four in Batumi and

Luca Polare Opens 15th Branch, Continues Rapid Development

one in Kobuleti.Besides the highest quality and espe-

cially delicious ice cream, the Luca Polare menu includes muffi ns, biscuits, cakes, caramelized roasted almonds, fresh juices, and various fruit and salads.

“We are happy that Luca continues its rapid development and we are proud that it maintains international standards both in product and service directions,” noted Tea Tabagari, the Director-General of the brand. “We have big and ambitious plans ahead and we will make our fans happy by offering exciting novelties in

the future.”Georgian ice cream parlor network

Luca Polare offers it customers up to 60 varieties of ice cream and exclusive cof-fee.

The ice cream is produced in Georgia, with natural products, using fresh fruit

and milk. None of the products contain artifi cial additives in order to prolong color, fl avor or shelf life.

A mix of 100% premium quality Ara-bica grains, collected in South America and roasted in Germany with traditional methods, is exclusively sent to Luca

Polare customers in Georgia.In its 11 years, Luca Polare has become

a favorite for both the young and not so young thanks to its high-quality prod-ucts, friendly service and focus on cus-tomer demands- all keys to the com-pany’s success.

BY SAMANTHA GUTHRIE

The Singapore Convention on Mediation was signed on Wednesday, August 7, by 46 UN Member States, Georgia among them. Major

players in international trade also signed on to the agreement, including the United States, China, India, Turkey, and South Korea. Georgia was represented at the signing by Minister of Justice Thea Tsu-lukiani.

Offi cially called the UN Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation, the conven-tion is designed to ease the settlement process for cross-border commercial and trade-related disputes. Such conven-tions regulate international trade struc-tures and help maintain the relationships that keep modern globalized economies moving.

After the signing, the Ministry of Jus-tice of Georgia released a statement say-

ing “Georgia is one of the fi rst countries that joined the convention. By joining the convention, Georgia took one step closer to the goal of becoming the regional hub for mediation.” Vying for that honor is Singapore itself, and, with its name attached to the convention as the place of its signing, the tiny city-state has a leg up.

During the signing ceremony, Singa-

pore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced, “This will help advance international trade, commerce and invest-ment...today, a group of states have come together to recommit ourselves to mul-tilateralism and to declare that we remain open for business.”

UN Legal Affairs Assistant Secretary-General Stephen Mathias commented, “Uncertainty surrounding the enforce-

ment of settlement agreements had been the main obstacle of the greater use of mediation...The convention sets the standards for enforcing and invoking settlement agreements, the requirements for reliance on settlement agreements and the grounds for refusing to grant relief.”

Mediation is a common method for settling commercial disputes in the United States and the United Kingdom, but in other parts of the world it faces questions of legal grey areas, credibility, and public skepticism.

Georgia has recently increased its focus on mediation at the national level, with the support of UNDP and European Union programs. In March of this year, the Georgian government submitted a draft law on mediation to Parliament, which calls for the creation of an alter-native agency of dispute settlement – a Mediation Institute.

As the Ministry of Justice, who wrote the draft law, explained at the time of its submission, the current judicial system is overloaded with civil disputes, leading

to delays and backups in the system which hinder the swift administration of justice.

“A thoroughly prepared, impartial third party in the mediation process helps citizens and business representatives to resolve civil disputes without long-term and expensive judicial processes, in a mutually agreed manner,” the explana-tory note of the draft law reads.

If adopted, as it is expected to be, the law will apply to disputes in various sec-tors, including businesses, banking, labor, and loans. Although in March, Tsuluki-ani did note that there is a lack of trained, qualifi ed mediators in the country, and expressed hope that the new law on mediation would support the growth of the profession.

The aim of the Singapore Convention on Mediation is the same as Georgia’s domestic draft law – to create an inter-national framework to empower and support businesses to settle international disputes outside of a courtroom, through mediation, which will save signifi cant time and money.

Image source: Ministry of Justice

Georgia Signs Convention on Trade Dispute Mediation

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 2019 9SOCIETY

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BY VAZHA TAVBERIDZE

Switzerland and Georgia are brothers in more than mountains. Yet Switzerland is the paragon of stability, a state that seem-ingly works like a well-oiled mechanism of the watch they so rave about: every-

thing is in place, tick-tock, no rushing, no surprises, while Georgia is every bit a mixture of that bom-bastic chaos that is so quintessential to the Cauca-sus that even the volatile Southern Europeans would be impressed. Mind you, it is still the most democratic country in the region. All that, though, is fi rst impression, barely scratching a surface. As was well demonstrated in the speech of the Swiss Ambassador to Georgia, His Excellence Patric Franzen, that he gave to commemorate The Swiss National day – an annual event where politicians, journalists and civil sector representatives all gather to pay their due respects to that small nation in the Alps that has become synonymous with suc-cess over the latest couple of centuries.

It was perhaps an answer to a quintessential ques-tion for our country: how long will it take for Geor-gia to become a country where land is taken care of in this manner, where infrastructure and plan-ning are not just fancy words you ask government and international funding for? As long as it may take, baby steps, but we've got to move forward and there can hardly be a better model to follow than the Swiss one. One particular message rang especially important in the Ambassador’s speech: the importance of political dialogue, and one prob-ably needn't have to be a political expert to fi gure out that it was echoing the recent events that unfolded in our fair capital city.

"Over decades we had to learn that a construc-tive compromise is not a weakness but a strength," Ambassador Franzen said. "We had to learn that power-sharing with the weaker is more sustainable than dominance of the stronger, and we had to learn that a respectful dialogue with the political opponent is more effective than its personal dis-creditation. The culture of political dialogue has become part of our DNA. Today, we can say that we are united in our diversity through dialogue and compromise and have a high level of political stability."

This, however, was not the only insight the Ambas-sador was trying to get across. Particular emphasis was given to how much the bilateral relations between the two countries have evolved since Georgia gaining independence, when Switzerland

was not only one of the fi rst countries to recognize the fl edgling state, but also one of the fi rst to pro-vide signifi cant humanitarian aid as Georgia went through a dark period of secessionist confl icts and civil war. And the support since has only seen growth, with Switzerland never backpedaling on deepening the partnership, both on the political and economic level.

"We committed a total of $45 million in the period 2017-2020 and have all elements in place to start to develop our next cooperation program for the years 2021/24,” Ambassador Franzen reported. “We are among the biggest donors in Georgia per capita of our population and we look forward to further devel-oping our cooperation with our partners and to be focused, capacity building and business oriented, and effective." And lest it is forgotten, Switzerland still acts as a mediator between Russia and Georgia due to the absence of diplomatic relations, while the Geneva Talks remain one of the main platforms for dialogue between Georgia and its volatile break-away regions. Dialogue, as mentioned above, is one thing Georgia can learn from Switzerland – the men-tor's skill is perhaps the best in the world, and with an apt pupil the only way is up.

“We try to facilitate interaction between them on concrete, operational issues that are important for their citizens. We act as mediator and facilitator, for example, in the implementation of the Customs Monitoring Agreement. And in the framework of our Human Security Program we contribute to confi dence building and dialogue in the region,” Franzen added, underlining his country's support for Georgia's European integration. Switzerland itself might have chosen to opt out both of EU and the NATO, but it’s a luxury they can afford. And it's all about choice too: Switzerland chose that path, while the sovereign nation of Georgia chose a different one, and the Swiss respect the choices of their partners.

So, to go back to the very fi rst argument – instead of comparisons, mayhap we must look for lessons when it comes to the Swiss-Georgian relationship. And one simple, yet crucial lesson might end up being the most rewarding one: realizing that despite all differences in mentality, Switzerland is the example Georgia has to strive for and look up to. And although the situation for our country may often look perilous, let us not forget that life was not a piece of cake for the Swiss either, for centu-ries. They too had mighty empires looking down at them and fought more than once for the inde-pendence and sovereignty of their country. They endured and we must too: endure, and in enduring grow strong, as the saying goes.

Alpen Know-How for Georgia

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 201910 SOCIETY

Why do Georgians Choose HUAWEI smartphones? Per-haps because com-pany offers the best

devices on the market. Moreover, this is a company which always cares for its customers and focuses on protecting their interests above all.

In recent times, there was a lot of news and unconfi rmed information spread about HUAWEI, however, it seems the Georgian customers were unafraid and went on expecting technological inno-vations from HUAWEI.

Kakha Bitsadze, a doctor, has been a loyal customer of HUAWEI for fi ve years.

„Initially, I did not choose the HUAWEI smartphone myself, it was a gift from my friend. Before that, I was the victim of a bad stereotype that „Chinese prod-ucts have no good quality“

„Prior to buying the equipment, I always get acquainted with the product features in detail, making comparisons with similar models. The ratio of price and quality is also important. Besides blog-gers’ reviews, I also get acquainted with the thousands of comments left from

users and then make a decision on pur-chasing a certain product. I was inter-ested in HUAWEI due to its fast devel-opment and progress. I got acquainted with its history, founders, production, capital turnover, etc. The numbers were impressive. As a result, there was a feel-ing that it would become the leader in the market. Meanwhile, the gifted smart-phone became old and when the time came to purchase a new phone, I bought the HUAWEI P30 Pro without any hes-itation. I was happy with the signal qual-ity, interface and of course, camera … HUAWEI is defi nitely the leader for its main cameras in its price category. The fast charging system, best photo shoot and zoom - these are the main features which made the HUAWEI P30 Pro the model, I wanted most.”

Kakha Magradze, a PR Specialist, also became a HUAWEI user fi ve years ago. Currently, he owns his 5th model pro-duced by HUAWEI and as he claims, it is both comfortable and affordable.

„At fi rst, I bought HUAWEI for its qual-ity and price. Even today this is the main defi ning argument for me. Additionally, the camera of the latest models is truly

distinguished, which is the main reason I became a loyal user of HUAWEI. I’m not a technology expert, but I can use the features of the camera which are suitable for social networks. As for the rest, the main thing for me is not to have to charge the battery during the day and for the phone to last the use of several applications and games at the same time, which is just what my HUAWEI P20 Pro does!“

As it turns out, while choosing a smart-phone, the main, most important factors for the customer are: camera, battery, design and power.

„During my 24-hour shift, which can even last up to 30 hours, I get a lot of incoming calls, messages, SMS, video calls. I love traveling and shooting wher-ever something unusual and interesting happens. Wearing a camera is very awk-ward. The advantage of a mobile phone camera is its speed of action, allowing you to capture that unique and special shot. Due to my active lifestyle, fast charging is very important. For some time, I even thought that HUAWEI was producing smartphones for me person-ally, as it was so suitable for me,” said Kakha Bitsadze.

„The four components I love HUAWEI for will always be its integral parts: the best camera, strong connection, fast charging and immortalized battery. The other companies are far behind in this regard,“ says another HUAWEI customer, Giorgi Chokheli.

„Exactly those components caused my interest and I bought HUAWEI, because it is more refi ned and accessible com-pared to its competitors,“ he adds.

In addition to a competitive price and design of smartphone, the main element while choosing the phone for Chokheli was the power of the battery and photo shoot features, considering his profes-sion:

„I like the battery power. I also use the fast charging feature, which is very com-fortable. However, the main reason behind my choice was the camera's stunning features. Macro shooting mode, wide view lens and night shooting mode are

Why Do Georgian Customers Choose HUAWEI?

no less important. I use the smartphone mainly for shooting, but I think that high quality graphics will be very attractive for lovers of mobile games,“ Giorgi Chokheli.

The fascination in HUAWEI smart-phones lies in one other detail: „If you decide to buy HUAWEI at least once, the power of attraction is so great that you will never give it up,“ Chokheli says.

HUAWEI products and services are available in more than 170 countries and are used by a third of the world's popu-

lation. There are 16 research and devel-opment centers operating worldwide in the USA, Germany, Sweden, Russia, India and China. HUAWEI Consumer BG is one of three business units of HUAWEI, mainly focusing on the production of smartphones, personal computers, tab-lets and cloud services. The HUAWEI Global Network is based on 20 years of experience in the telecommunications business and serves to the production of innovative technologies to customers around the world.

The second Stage of construc-tion of Green Diamond residential complex by MAQRO Construction has fi nished and the process of

handing over the fl ats to owners has begun.

Many new owners have already received keys to their fl ats and will soon able to move in.

Residential apartments “Green Dia-mond” include three Stages of construc-tion and covers 70,000 square meters of territory. The project is located in an ecologically clean environment in Tbi-lisi, in Dighomi district, near the Olym-pic facilities.

MAQRO Construction says that with all three stages of construction, the com-plex will include 23 living blocks and 1686 fl ats.

Apart from fl ats made with high qual-ity building materials, owners have access to open swimming pools, a basketball court and open training spaces, play-grounds for children, running and walk-ing tracks, commercial stores, a kinder-garten and a school.

Recreational zones were a matter of high attention for Green Diamond, so 1/3 of the complex is occupied by green area.

The residents of the complex say it is

important for them that their children grow up in a healthy environment. Future residents Ia Tsikhelashvili and Zaza Soselia have already visited their fl ats with their children, Ana and Nikoloz.

Both of them confi rm Green Diamond has satisfi ed all the criteria for a quality and healthy environment.

“For my family, it has always been very important to live in a cozy, safe and of course healthy environment. We also wanted a safe and fun environment for

our children. We are very lucky that Green Diamond is a place that includes just that,” says Ia.

MAQRO Construction has worked out a concept for Smart Living which envi-sions comfortable living in one, eco-logically clean and green space.

The hand-over process of fl ats is ongo-ing at Green Diamond, and the Company says that the number of fl ats left unsold is already limited, but there are some still waiting for you to catch.

Green Diamond Begins Handing over Flats to Owners as Second Stage of Construction Finishes

The Brand that Can Fully Meet the Needs of a Doctor, Photographer and PR Specialist

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 2019 11SOCIETY

BY SAMANTHA GUTHRIE

Many medications needed to treat six chronic dis-eases are available in Georgia for one GEL or less. 35 different medi-

cations are included in the government Program for Providing Medicine for Chronic Diseases, which treat cardio-vascular disease, thyroid gland condi-tions, chronic lung disease, type 2 dia-betes, epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. The program is being implemented at 118 participating PSP-brand pharmacies throughout Georgia.

On July 16, Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze announced plans to expand the Program for Providing Medicine for Chronic Diseases in a press conference at his offi ce. He told reporters, “One of the most painful challenges manifests itself in the fact that out-of-pocket payments of our citizens on medication are very high in Georgia,” noting that the government has been actively working to mitigate the

issue. “We will be considering this very important initiative at the Executive Gov-ernment Meeting today and adjustments will thus be made to the program of med-ication for chronic diseases,” said Bakhtadze. The Prime Minister concluded his speech with a pledge that the Georgian Government will continue working in this direction to minimize out-of-pocket med-ication costs for Georgians.

Only certain groups deemed socially vulnerable are eligible for the program, including pensioners, people with dis-abilities, and those living under the pov-erty line. The new eligibility criteria came into force on August 6 – initially, it included only people registered as ‘socially vulnerable’ according to the Social Security Agency, which provides social support to people living in pov-erty. Additional targeted groups are expected to be added into the program in the coming weeks.

Bakhtadze continuously emphasized the need for affordable medication, and highlighted the diffi culty of many Geor-gians to afford necessary, even life-saving medication. The Prime Minister also

expressed his belief that the program is a poverty-fi ghting tool, as a large portion of the incomes of many in Georgia is spent at the pharmacy. Since the program’s initiation in July 2017, it has helped more than 60,000 people. Earlier this year, the program was expanded to include med-ications for epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. Minister of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labor, Health and Social Affairs of Geor-gia, David Sergeenko, said previously that he aims to expand the program to include as many as 60 medications.

While the program is mainly met with support, it is not without controversy. In July 2018, GEORGIA TODAY reported that, although a total of 5 million GEL ($1.71 mln) had been allocated to the medication price-control program at that time, and more than 70% of the program’s total budget had been spent, the partici-pation rates were well below targets. Healthcare specialist Sergo Chikhladze explained that the program was initially designed to provide nearly free medicine to 150,000 – 200,000 benefi ciaries, but was only reaching about 18,000 people.

Image source: PSP Pharmacy

Discount Program for Chronic Disease Medications Expands

BY ANA DUMBADZE

An adapted beach for persons with disabilities will be opened on August 9, on Batumi Boulevard, opposite the Old Ship restaurant.

As reported by the administration of Batumi Boulevard, for the ongoing tour-ist season, the infrastructure at this loca-tion has been adapted to meet the full needs of persons with disabilities.

As part of the Adapted Infrastructure Project for 2019, an adapted beach fea-turing a path, showers and fi tting rooms have been arranged. A complex with wheelchairs will be set up beside the Old Ship restaurant.

Floating beach wheelchairs have also

Adapted Beach for PWDs Opens on Batumi Boulevard

been purchased, and customers can use them for free.

The Batumi boulevard administration

purchased fi ve fl oating beach wheel-chairs for those with disabilities for 39,880 GEL.

Photo: Batumi Boulevard/Facebook

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 201912 SOCIETY

BY AMY JONES

National Geographic will publish extensive materi-als on Georgia to promote tourism in the region, the Ministry of Economy

announced Monday. The Deputy Minister of Economy and

Sustainable Development, Nikoloz Ala-vidze, and the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Khvtisiashvili, met with the Editor in Chief of National Geo-graphic’s Traveler magazine, Justin Kavanagh to discuss the future content.

On his visit to Georgia, Kavanagh will visit Tusheti and its national park, Kakhekti, Kazbegi, and Vashlovani national park to ‘get acquainted with the growing tourism potential of the coun-try,’ stated the Ministery of Economy.

Kavanagh has been interested in fea-turing Georgia and the country’s grow-ing tourism potential since April, when he received information on Georgia’s wine culture, cuisine, traditions, and nature.

National Geographic will feature Geor-gia in magazines, catalogues and on social media, using visual material taken dur-ing the visit. “We are very pleased to be in Georgia and impressed with the county’s hospitality,” said Kavanagh.

The National Tourism Administration of the Ministry of Economy and Sustain-able Development of Georgian and the Embassy of Georgia to Ireland helped to co-ordinate the visit.

“I hope that the National Geographic group, led by Justin Kavanagh, will be able to spread the relevant information via his publications and it will help us to increase the interest of tourists who plan their tours through publications such as National Geographic,” noted Nikoloz Alavidze. “It is important for us to cooperate with this publishing group.”

Since the Russian-Georgia flight embargo imposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin from July 8, the Geor-gian government has been working to promote tourism to Georgia. In July, the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Natia Turnava announced

that the government has various pro-jects to encourage tourists to visit the country.

“We have ongoing contracts with CNN, Bloomberg and National Georgraphic where Georgia is advertised and popu-larized as being a safe and attractive country for tourists,” she said. “Market-ing plans and campaigns have also been implemented in the Baltic States, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine.”

National Geographic has already fea-tured Georgia in their publications numerous times. They also run regular tours through Georgia and Armenia.

WHERE IS NATIONAL GEORGRAPHIC GOING?

Tusheti Known as one of the last truly wild

places in Europe, Tusheti is often con-sidered to be Georgia’s most beautiful region. Bordering Chechnya and Dag-estan on the northern slopes of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, the moun-tainous area witnessed centuries of fas-cinating history and culture which still lives on today. As there is no public transport to Tusheti, you will need to drive with a 4X4 vehicle or pay for a driver to Omalo village.

Vashlovani Rolling emerald hills give way to

unique wavering rock formations and shallow forests as you descend south-erly into Vashlovani National Park. Located close to Georgia’s border with Azerbaijan, you can fi nd rare species of birds, an abundance of snakes and animals here that you would maybe expect to see on African safari rather than in Georgia, such as jackals, gazelles, and hyenas. To enjoy the wilderness of Vashlovani park, you will need a 4X4 vehicle that is capable of off-road driv-ing. You should also try and visit in

dry weather as the roads can become very muddy.

Kazbegi Perhaps Georgia’s most well-known

national park, Kazbegi is known for its stunning mountains and diverse nature. Brown bears, Lynx, birds of prey, Caucacasian snowcok, Caucasian black grouse, and over 1,347 species of plants call the wild mountain slopes home. To visit Kazbegi, you can easily take a marshrukta from Didube bus station in Tbilisi to Stepantsminda village.

National Geographic Team Visits Georgia to Prepare Publications

BLOG BY TONY HANMER

These people are high on my list of heroes. I just love what they’re doing. Check it out at:

https://transcaucasian-trail.org/en/home/

They’ve been at it for several years now, renovating or making new trails throughout the Transcaucasus (south of Russia). Connecting with local commu-nities in advance, starting dialogs, asking advice, asking for approval and blessing. This is important, because they don’t want to just come in and try to do some-thing on this scale without local involve-ment and understanding!

The trails will bring new tourists, new economic opportunities too, and also be good for local people to use, of course, on a daily basis in their pastoral lives. This is already happening, including right here from where I write, in Etseri.

There can, of course, be slip-ups, mis-understandings, even when 100% local people are working side by side with them. One of the things to deal with, we notice in Svaneti, is potential jeal-

ousy when the perception is that a trail on route X will be of benefi t to those nearest it, as hosts in guest houses or shop patrons, but not to those further away.

Such a situation seems to have hap-pened with the building of a bridge to replace an old existing one in the village of K’ala, between Ipari and Ushguli, Upper Svaneti. The team, including a Svan from Mestia, went in carefully, meeting with locals formally, seeking their reaction to the project. It all seemed positive. They bought wood and other materials, and spent several days mak-ing this amazing bridge.

In the middle of the night, as soon as it was fi nished, chainsaws could be heard. The next morning the bridge was visible, cut off and cast into the river.

The team, of course, were devastated. All that work, fi nished, never used, destroyed! It was very discouraging, of course. They desperately sought to learn in the community what had gone wrong; opinions and blame differed. But it does seem clear that not everyone was happy with the project, although this did not come out at all in the extensive conver-sations before building started. For some reason, it was allowed to be fi nished

before being ruined, a blow to the team.They came to us to stay for a night

before moving on to trails between us and the village of Becho. I had heard the shocking news a bit earlier, and this was my chance to hear it fi rsthand from the very people involved, an international team of 11 including a Georgian from Tbilisi and a Svan. It really seems that they did all they could to minimize prob-lems and maximize mutual understand-ing. And still.

They press on, hoping to learn what can be done differently to prevent such happenings in the future. They are very rare in the organization’s experience anyway, as generally things go only pos-itively. And they’re not going to let this setback slow them down.

My feeling is that the Svans’ tendency to be against one another, historically demonstrated, is at play. I’ve seen it in my own village and elsewhere too. It’s not news to people here. I hope they can grow in their understanding; united, they can do so much in and for their com-munities; divided, they can lose out on a lot of opportunities to improve things in an area very far away from Tbilisi, with long winters and a comparatively hard life. They need each other.

Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at

www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenais-sance/He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti

TransCaucasus Trailblazers

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 2019 13CULTURE

BY THEA MORRISON

A few days ago, Georgia’s Minister of Education, Sci-ence, Culture and Sports Mikhe i l Ba t i ashv i l i announced that soon the

country will have a National Foundation for Culture, which will be set up on the initiative of the ministry.

“The culture management system and funding model need real reform and not one-time fragmented changes. We are starting a complex reform in this direc-tion. The reform is based on EU recom-mendations and suits our country's needs. Our goal is to make the system more fl exible, making processes more open and transparent,” he said.

He explained that the Ministry of Edu-cation, Science, Culture and Sports will defi ne the policy and strategy for the culture fi eld, while the foundation will be responsible for the implementation of this policy.

“The Ministry performs the joint func-tions of managing the institutions in the fi eld of culture, and in the process of managing and funding the competitions, events and project planning. This model is changing, and as a result of the reform, the ministry will defi ne the policy, pri-

Image source: mes.gov.ge

National Foundation for Culture to Be Established in Georgia

orities and strategy of the cultural direc-tion, while the new foundation will implement the policy and priorities set by the Ministry,” Batiashvili said.

He also noted the foundation aims to support the development of Georgian culture and cultural economy, popu-larization and internationalization of culture.

“The Foundation will implement tar-geted programs and projects in the fi eld of culture, will administer state grant competitions and other competitions planned for cultural priorities, and organ-ize and monitor issuing grants for people working in the fi eld of culture,” he added.

The Minister said the National Foun-dation for Culture will start working in

January 2020, while preparatory works will be carried out until the end of the year.

He added that the budget of the fund will amount to GEL 50 ($17.05) million and Irma Ratiani is to be appointed as the head of the foundation.

Ratiani is a literary theoretician and translator, Doctor of Philological Sci-

ences (2003), Full Professor, at Tbilisi State University. She also is a Head of the Department of General and Com-parative Literary Studies; Director of the Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature; Editor in Chief of annual sci-entifi c journals Sjani (Thoughts) and LitInfo; and member of a number of international scientifi c organizations and associations.

Nikoloz Vacheishvili, a former director of the National Agency for Cultural Her-itage Preservation, and a member of the Tbilisi City Council, believes the crea-tion of a National Cultural Fund may be a good idea, but it is not excluded that it will increase bureaucracy and nepo-tism.

He noted the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport itself is one of the most bureaucratic agencies.

“It is possible that funding will become more centralized, and more nepotism and more subjective decisions will be seen. If it does not happen so, it will be good, but there is a high probability that it will happen,” he said.

Vacheishvili explains Irma Ratiani might be a good professional but in the fund her work can turn out to be inef-fective.

“There is a high probability that with such planning, the results will not be very good in the end,” he said.

BY LIKO CHIGLADZE

A special evening celebrating Georgia’s most distin-guished living composer Giya Kancheli’s master-pieces was held at the

renowned Summit Music Festival in New York on August 4. The evening consisted of two parts: a documentary fi lm about Giya Kancheli was screened, followed by a concert ‘Miniatures for Violin and Piano,’ unveiling pieces of the great maestro.

Particularly for this important occa-sion, Director of the fi lm Olga Gregory and Producer Antimony Gregory came from Canada to screen their mutual documentary fi lm ‘Giya Kancheli: I used to hate the Clarinet.’ In order to perform the music of the great Georgian com-poser, celebrated Clarinetist Julian Milkis,

also coined the only student of the clar-inet legend Benny Goodman, paid a special visit from Switzerland, while well-known pianist Vadim Monastirsky came from Jerusalem.

Founded in 1991, the Summit Music Festival assembles a faculty of the high-est caliber, representing the fi nest tradi-tions of Europe, Asia and the American continents, to offer a concentrated study in ensemble and orchestral programs to talented students from all over the world. Efrem Briskin, Artistic Director, and David Krieger, Executive Director, began with a small summer music camp pro-gram which transformed into a summer music festival of the highest quality with an international character. By 1993, they had established the basic structure of its present program to serve serious pre-professional international musicians and offer its host community an exciting array of chamber music and orchestral concerts. This year, for the fi rst time, the

festival hosted the Kancheli Program with the participation of distinguished musicians.

The acclaimed Georgian maestro com-posed music for Georgian theater and cinema for years and his works have accompanied some of Georgia’s most iconic cinematography. Throughout his life, Kancheli has composed more than 37 orchestral pieces, 10 chamber music pieces and 10 choral operas. Kancheli has lived in Western Europe since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. First, he lived in Berlin and later moved to Antwerp where he became composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Phil-harmonic. Kancheli has seen world pre-mieres of his works in Seattle, as well as with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur. He continues to receive regular commissions. New CDs of his recent works are regularly released, notably on the ECM label. The spec-tacular musician has earned international

recognition and has been named among the world’s greatest movie composers alongside Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota.

The hall was full of Georgian immi-grants and locals eager to see the fi lm and enjoy heavenly beautiful melodies.

The fi lm starts with Julian Milkis talk-ing about Kancheli: “I heard his music for the fi rst time in 1987. I was driving the car, the radio was on and I suddenly stopped and sat without moving for around 15 minutes. It was a real shock, since I’d never heard such music before. The melody captivated me to such an extent I got lost in it and arrived late to my own concert,” Milkis recalled.

“The fi lm Giya Kancheli: I used to hate the Clarinet was born by chance,” says husband of the Director and famous TV-host Antimony Gregory. The couple paid a visit to Antwerp to record an interview with the notable composer. The conver-sation with Kancheli lasted for over three hours. As a result, the recording was so interesting that they decided to continue recording the interview and make a documentary fi lm. Although at fi rst the maestro was hesitant, mutual friend Julian Milkis managed to persuade him. Milkis is sure that Kancheli’s music will not be forgotten after 50 years, or even after 100.

The second part of the Kancheli even-ing was opened with a grandiose concert Miniatures for Violin and Piano. Vadim Monastirsky, famous pianist and Profes-sor at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Israel played the Royal Piano accompanied by Julian Milkis’ clarinet. They have already performed the Miniatures both in Jerusalem and America a couple of times.

“I play each note with pain,” Professor Monastirsky said during the rehearsal, a few hours before the concert. “This is amazing, I have played so many pieces in my life, but I think that a musician must feel Kancheli in order to under-stand and experience the pain in his

music. It doesn’t matter in which place among 22 countries I have played Kanche-li’s music, be it Germany, Italy, Ireland or Mexico, everywhere the audience listened to his pieces, they literally cried. It is really unbelievable,” he said.

The concert, presenting 18 miniatures full of deafening sadness and quiet joy, bitter glee and merciless self-irony, left the guests speechless. The audience listened with bated breath. People who heard the music felt happiness and at the same time sobbed. Half of the hall was emigrants from Georgia, and to them the music of Giya Kancheli per-formed by Vadim Monastirsky and Julian Milkis was familiar from the old mov-ies, evoking nostalgia and arousing mixed emotions and memories from the past. The other half of the audience was American. They did not suffer from childhood memories when listening to this music, but cried from happiness and sadness on hearing the amazing melodies. They reacted to Kanchelis’ music in the same way as the people in 22 other countries, ultimate proof that Giya Kancheli’s music will endure cen-turies and continue to impact people and their feelings.

Georgia’s Acclaimed Composer Giya Kancheli’s Pieces Performed at Summit Music Festival in NY

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 201914 CULTURE

WHAT’S ON IN TBILISIMUSIC

GEORGIAN FOLK SHOW 10 Rustaveli Ave.Every Tuesday, Friday, Sunday

The fi rst full and systematic folk show enabling tourists to visit the Georgian regions in just one hour and exploring the world-renowned folklore.Start time: 20:00Tickets: 40 GEL

FOLKLORE CONCERTS FOR TOURISTS

Sanapiro Str. Bldg 2.

Every SundayAugust 11Folklore Evenings of ensembleEGARIOffering folklore events to popularize Georgian folk music among tourists, the concerts present songs, trisagions, instrumental music, dance, and urban folklore from different parts of Georgia, as well as ethno-jazz music. Guest can hear live polyphony and a diversity of instruments (Salamuri, Panduri, Chonguri, Chiboni, Doli).Start time: 20:00Ticket: 50 GEL

LAGODEKHI BLUES FESTIVAL

Lagodekhi

August 10BLUES FESTIVALSharon Lewis & LUCA GIORDANOLagodekhi Blues Festival attendees will for the fi rst time be able to listen to classical blues in the Italian style.Start time: 21:00Ticket: 15-40 GEL

AJARA

BLACK SEA ARENAShekvetili

13 August THIRTY SECONDS TO MARSJared and Shannon Leto have sold over fi ve million albums worldwide and the band’s videos have more than 300 million views on YouTube. They have received numerous awards, including a dozen MTV awards worldwide, a Billboard Music award and honors from NME, Kerrang! and Fuse.Start time: 20:00Ticket: 50-200 GEL

MUSEUM

GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM SIMON JANASHIA

MUSEUM3 Rustaveli Ave.TEL (+995 32) 299 80 22, 293 48 21www.museum.ge

Exhibitions: GEORGIAN COSTUME AND WEAPONRY OF THE 18TH-20TH CENTURIESNUMISMATIC TREASURYEXHIBITION STONE AGE GEORGIAARCHEOLOGICAL TREASURENEW LIFE TO THE ORIENTAL COLLECTIONS

Until September 10Under the joint initiative of Georgian National Museum and Georgian Post, Exhibition: STORY TOLD BY POSTAGE STAMPSDedicated to the 100th anniversary of the fi rst Georgian stamp.

Until August 31Multimedia technology exhibition- IMMAGICA. A JOURNEY INTO BEAUTYAn impressive journey within time, introducing us to Italian paintings of the XIV-XIX centuries; a combination of voice, lighting, immersive visual and multimedia. Giotto– ‘Ognissanti Madonna’ and the ‘Scrovegni Chapel,’ Leonardo da Vinci– ‘Annunciation,’ Botticelli– ‘The Birth of Venus’ and ‘Spring,’ Raffaello– ‘The Madonna of the Goldfi nch, Bellotto– ‘Piazza San Marco,’ ‘Castello Sforzesco,’ Canaletto– “The Chapel of Eton College”, Canova– ‘Amor e Psyche’ and ‘The Graces’.

Until September 8The Georgian National Museum and the Embassy of Japan in Georgia present Japanese CALLIGRAPHY MASTER KOSHU'S (AKEMI LUCAS) EXHIBITION "ECHO" Koshu took part in "Tokugawa and the Masters," part of which was hosted by the Georgian National Museum in October 2018. Koshu says her fi rst visit to Signagi fi lled her heart with love and this is refl ected in her subsequent works. "I hope my love for Georgia, poured into my artwork, is refl ected and resonates in people's hearts, rippling out and leaving an echo for the future," she says.

IOSEB GRISHASHVILI TBILISI HISTORY MUSEUM

- KARVASLA8 Sioni St.TEL (+995 32) 2 98 22 81

Until September 10The Georgian National Museum within the project "Contemporary Art Gallery" presents VAKHO BUGADZE'S EXHIBITION: ‘THREE, FOUR" Together with Vakho Bughadze are artists Gogi Okropiridze and Katrin Bolt.

MUSEUM OF SOVIET OCCUPATION

4 Rustaveli Ave. TEL (+995 32) 2 99 80 22, 2 93 48 21 www.museum.ge

The exhibition hall is equipped with monitors, where visitors can see documentaries of various historical events. The exhibition also includes one of the train carriages in which the participants of the national uprising of 1924 were executed. It is also dedicated to the history of the anti-occupational, national-liberation movement of Georgia and to the victims of the Soviet political repression throughout this period.

MUSEUM OF ILLUSIONS10 Betlemi Str.

Discover the Museum of IllusionsBe brave enough to jump into an illusion created by the Vortex, deform the image of yourself in a Mirror Room, be free in the Infi nity room, resist the laws of gravity and size ratio, and take selfi es in every possible pose. Enjoy the collection of holograms, and discover optical illusions.

MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS

10 Betlemi Str.

THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS The unique collection of the museum aims to provoke feelings of understanding among individuals and serve as some kind of therapy for those who have experience break-ups.

GALLERY

THE NATIONAL GALLERY11 Rustaveli Ave.TEL (+995 32) 215 73 00Until February 26 (2020)

GRAND MASTERS FROM THE GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM COLLECTION XIX – XX CENTURY

CINEMA

AMIRANI CINEMA36 Kostava St.TEL (+995 32) 2 99 99 55www.kinoafi sha.geEvery Wednesday ticket: 5 GEL

FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS & SHAWDirected by David LeitchCast: Vanessa Kirby, Dwayne Johnson, Eiza GonzálezGenre: Action, AdventureLanguage: English Georgian SubtitlesStart time: 22:15Ticket: 15 GEL

ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOODDirected by Quentin TarantinoCast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot RobbieGenre: DramaLanguage: English Georgian SubtitlesStart time: 15:00, 18:30Ticket: 10-14 GEL

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARKDirected by André ØvredalCast: Zoe Margaret Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel RushGenre: Horror, Mystery, ThrillerLanguage: English Georgian SubtitlesStart time: 16:00, 19:15Ticket: 14-15 GEL

CAVEA GALLERY2/4 Rustaveli Ave.

ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOOD(Info Above)Language: English Georgian SubtitlesStart time: 12:15, 15:45, 18:45Ticket: 11-19 GEL

THE LION KINGDirected by Jon FavreauCast: John Kani, Seth Rogen, Donald GloverGenre: Animation, Adventure, DramaLanguage: English Start time: 11:50, 14:00, 16:45, 19:45, 22:15Ticket: 10-19 GEL

FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS & SHAW(Info Above)Language: English Start time: 12:45, 15:45, 19:15Ticket: 11-19 GEL

BATUMI TENNIS CLUBBatumi Boulevard

August 13GORAN BREGOVIA composer of many famous songs and soundtracks, Bregovic worked with director of many well-known movies of Emir Kusturica and made songs which featured singers like Iggy Pop and Cesária Évora. His music mixes Balkan folk, rock and symphony.Start time: 21:00Ticket: 30-50 GEL

SECTOR 26Batumi Boulevard

August 14ANJA SCHNEIDERStart time: 22:00Ticket: 40 GEL

SOHO BATUMISeafront Promenade, Batumi

August 9LELA TSURTSUMIAStart time: 23:00Ticket: 30 GEL

August 10SUKHISHVILEBIStart time: 23:00Ticket: 35 GEL

August 12KORDZ & GIORGI ZAGARELIStart time: 23:00Ticket: 30 GEL

August 13IVAN DORNStart time: 23:00Ticket: 30 GEL

August 15MGZAVREBIStart time: 23:00Ticket: 30 GEL

BATUMI DRAMA THEATER1 Rustaveli Str.

Conceptart and fund Iavnana present: GALA CONCERT OF YOUNG VIRTUOSO MUSICIANSStart time: 23:00Ticket: 30 GEL

SHERATON POOLSheraton Batumi Hotel, Pool

August 10MERCEDES-BENZ EVENTSpecial evening, tasteful music and the main surprise, Milk & Sugar, the legend of House musicStart time: 23:00Ticket: 50-70 GEL

UP2YOUSeafront Promenade

August 9GIGA MIKABERIDZEStart time: 21:00Ticket: 30 GEL

August 11MAX THE SAXStart time: 22:00Ticket: 20 GEL

BATUMGORACable car Argo

FOLKLORE SHOWS EVERY DAYAll summer long, enjoy traditional folk shows every day from 8 pm. Enjoy UNESCO recognized traditional folk dances and songs, Georgian drum shows and master classes in dancing 250 meters above sea level. Start time: 20:00

KOBULETI PINEWOODKobuleti

August 10GR-FESTLine up:Main stage:KavelZAPAOrimGiorgi DevadzeYanamasteNEWABoyd ShidtFabrizio LapianaArt stage:Sally GulordavaLevan SamnashviliGvantsa AphkaidzeStart time: 17:00Ticket: 30-50 GEL

GEORGIA TODAY AUGUST 9 - 12, 2019 15CULTURE

GEORGIA TODAY

PUBLISHER & GM George Sharashidze

COMMERCIAL DEPARTMENT Commercial Director: Iva MerabishviliMarketing Manager: Sesili Tikaradze

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT: Editor-In-Chief: Katie Ruth Davies

Journalists: Tony Hanmer, Zaza Jgarkava, Maka Bibilashvili, Dimitri Dolaberidze, Vazha Tavberidze, Nugzar B. Ruhadze,Samantha Guthrie,Amy Jones, Thea Morrison,Ana Dumbadze, Ketevan Kvaratskheliya

Photographer: Irakli Dolidze

Website Manager/Editor: Katie Ruth Davies

Layout: Misha Mchedlishvili

Webmaster: Sergey Gevenov

Circulation Managers: David Kerdikashvili, David Djandjgava

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Tel.: +995 32 229 59 19E: info@georgiatoday.ge F: GeorgiaToday

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Reproducing material, photos and advertisements without prior editorial permission is strictly forbidden. The author is responsible for all material. Rights of authors are preserved. The newspaper is registered in Mtatsminda district court.

Reg. # 06/4-309

On August 6, Georgia’s Min-istry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport held a press conference on this year’s Batumi-Tbilisi Inter-

national Festival “Night Serenades.”The press conference was led by the

Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia, Levan Kharatishvili, Director General of the Festival, Nina Tsagareli, renowned Geor-gian mezzo-soprano Nino Surguladze, and Deputy Head of Department of Cul-ture of Tbilisi City Hall Maka Nasrash-vili.

With the support of the Ministry, from August 25 to September 4, the Batumi-Tbilisi International Festival "Night Serenades" will be held for the 11th year. A series of musical concerts will offer a variety of musical pieces to the enthu-siasts of classical music.

Concerts will be held on August 25, 27, 28 in the Batumi Ilia Chavchavadze Drama Theater and on September 2 and 4 in the Tbilisi State Conservatoire Grand Hall.

The Principal Conductor of the Festi-val is Maestro Vakhtang Machavariani.

The world-class concerts will be per-formed by famous soloists and conduc-tors such as the Orchestra "Virtuoses from Georgia,” created by the Artistic Director of the Festival, renowned vio-

Batumi-Tbilisi International Fest "Night Serenades" to Celebrate 11th Anniversary

linist and conductor Liana Isakadze; Nana Iashvili (violin); Nino Surguladze (mezzo-soprano); Anna-Liisa Bezrodny (violin, Finland/England); Jan-Eric Gus-tavsson (cello, Finland); Pantelis Kogiamis (specially invited conductor, Greece-Austria); Kazakh State Trio - Erlan Serik-baev (piano), Bagdat Abilhanov (violin) and Kurvanzhan Akhatov (Cello); Geor-gian musician Sandro Nebieridze (piano), and more.

During the press conference, the Direc-tor General of the Festival, Nina Tsagareli, pointed out the diversity of this year’s Festival program.

“This year’s program is very diverse and interesting for audiences of any age and taste. Renowned Georgian composer Vazha Azarashvili's cello concert will be performed by a famous cellist from Fin-land, Jan-Eric Gustavsson, for the fi rst time, and that’s not the only brilliant performance and pleasant surprise await-ing guests!” she said.

Along with other Georgian and foreign stars, this year’s festival will see the par-ticipation of world-famous mezzo-soprano Nino Surguladze, who says she is very happy and honored to participate in the festival.

“I’m joining the Festival for the fi rst time. This unique and prestigious festi-val is associated with the name of leg-endary Liana Isakadze and is always

packed with extraordinary musicians from around the globe. This time a vocal performance has been added to the fes-tival program for the fi rst time, which makes it even more interesting. This time, I will be honored to perform together with Maestro Vakhtang Machavariani, who is my inspiration. I cannot wait to sing for the Georgian audience again,” she noted.

As the Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia, Levan Kharatishvili, stated, Night Ser-enade” is one of the most important festivals for the Ministry of Culture, as well as for the whole country.

“The Festival maintains a quality and diverse program every year. This year’s program is especially impressive, as it involves world-famous stars, such as mezzo-soprano Nino Surguladze and

others. The audience will attend these unique events in Batumi and Tbilisi in August-September and traditionally, our Ministry will support it. I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the Festival. I am sure that very exciting adventures await for us within the frames of Night Serenades,” he elaborated.

The Deputy Head of Department of Culture of Tbilisi City Hall, Maka Nas-rashvili, once again expressed Tbilisi City Hall’s support towards the Festival and pointed out its importance for the devel-opment of the country’s cultural life.

“The festival has been held for 11 years already, and it plays a signifi cant role in the country’s cultural life, as well as tour-ism development. Tbilisi City Hall is a constant supporter and partner of this festival. Such events are especially impor-tant for our country and Tbilisi City Hall

will continue to actively support it in the future,” she said.

The Night Serenades Festival was founded in 1982 in Abkhazia, at the ini-tiative of famous Georgian violinist and conductor Liana Isakadze.

It ceased due to the war in Abkhazia. The restoration of the festival became possible only after 18 years, in 2009, in Georgia’s magnifi cent seaside city of Batumi.

Isakadze is still the Artistic Director of the festival. Since 2018, her nephew, artist Giorgi Isakadze, is also the Artistic Director of the Night Serenades.

Over the years, great interest in the festival led to its expansion and was renamed the Batumi-Tbilisi International Festival in 2015.

Tickets for the 2019 Night Serenades Festival are available online at ticket.ge.

BY NINI DAKHUNDARIDZE

From Elton John to Christina Aguillera, Check in Georgia has brought a lot of stars to the stage of the Black Sea Arena in the past three years since

it opened. The venue opened the 2019 season with a successful Black Eyed Peas’ concert on June 16 this year, meaning on August 6, Jessie J had a lot of pressure to keep up the audience’s expectations. However, with her astounding voice,

fantastic band, and high level of organi-zational management from the staff of the Black Sea Arena, Jessie J’s show gave a new meaning to the combination of words ‘tremendous success’.

The gates opened at around 18:00, but devoted fans of the British Pop star had been gathering around the Black Sea Arena hours prior, some had even spent the night there to grab the chance to see their favorite performer up close from the Golden Ring. When the doors opened, they poured into the Ring, many of them humming Jessie J’s hits, from ‘Queen’ to ‘Domino.’

Jessie J appeared on the main stage a little later than scheduled, opening the show with a 2015 single ‘Masterpiece’, meriting endless rounds of applause from the cheering audience. After a cou-ple of songs, the performer saluted the audience and explained her choice of outfi t and hairstyle – so different to her look at her Amsterdam show just a few days before the one in Shekvetili.

“I decided to dress up as myself from 2010, because that’s where it all started, and I’ve never been to Georgia. So to make up for it, I decided to take you all nine years back and sing the songs that I think you might want to hear,” said the British singer-songwriter over loud screams from the audience.

Jessie J did not forget to mention her gratitude for the sold-out show, admit-ting that the love she gets from people never ceases to amaze her and that fame has never becomes normal for her. The pop star united the audience, engaging them all with her hilarious self-depreci-ating humor. The latter combined with her own words: “You came to see me, I came to see you.” She asked the audi-ence not to record her performance of ‘Domino,’ just so she could see everyone’s faces and the blissful moment could be caught and enjoyed by all – making the public feel that Jessie J, the incredibly talented famous pop star, was just a

regular person, equal to them. This integ-rity shone from the star’s personality throughout the two-hour show in many ways – adding a song to her playlist at the fans’ request, conversing with the audience and taking videos with their phones, reading a fan’s letter on stage, warming up the listeners by having them sing along to an improvised ‘Jessie J and Georgia’ bit – all these and much more made the Shekvetili show unique for Georgian and foreign music lovers.

The winner of the 2011 BRIT Awards expressed her desire to come back to Georgia and as her Instagram post post-concert reads: “…THE ENERGY WAS MAD!!! My 1st show in Georgia and it was SOLD OUT! YOU WERE SO LOUD AND FULL OF LOVE. Thank you, thank you…”. The singer also posted a photo on her page that shows her having a blast on Shekvetili beach.

When asked about Jessie J’s thoughts and satisfaction with the concert, Exec-

utive Director of Black Sea Arena, Tato Kharchilava, told the press: “I haven’t talked to her yet, but I don’t think we need any further confi rmation – seeing her face and emotions on the stage spoke well of her satisfaction and happiness about today’s show.”

An excited fan, 20-year-old Katerina, shared her impressions with GEORGIA TODAY: “I’ve been to quite a few shows, but this one is particularly memorable for me. Because I’m such a huge fan. She’s such a modest person and an amazing performer – delivering 100% in every show. I can’t describe the feeling with words: it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

While the Black Sea Arena cleaned up after the show and started preparation for Thirty Seconds to Mars’ arrival on August 13, the music lovers left slowly, some of them admitting that they hadn’t known much about Jessie J before this concert but were completely in love with her from there on in.

Jessie J Takes Over Black Sea Arena

Photo Copyright: Alex Ruadze