Georgian opposition leader Nino Burjanadze, a former speaker of the parliament, traveled to Russia on Wednesday in a bid to rebuild relations destroyed by the two countries’ five-day war in August 2008.
“Russia is our neighbor, a powerful country that we have to work with,” Burjanadze said in televised comments at the Tbilisi airport before her departure. “I’m a serious politician. I do real politics, not like the rest of the opposition, who are running around busy with the mayoral elections” in May.
Burjanadze became speaker of the parliament in 2001 and served until May 2008, along with two stints as Georgia’s interim president. She led President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement party after the Rose Revolution that swept him to power in 2003. Since entering the opposition, she has blamed Saakashvili for the war with Russia and called for him to step down.
Former Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli began the opposition’s effort to cultivate ties with Moscow when he signed a deal to cooperate with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party last month.
Alexander Rondeli, head of the Tbilisi-based Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, said the opposition has turned to Moscow for financial as well as political support.
“The opposition has lost credibility in the West because of their radicalism, so Russia is their best bet for so-called support,” Rondeli said by telephone.
Petre Mamradze, an official at Noghaideli’s Movement for a Fair Georgia, said the party receives no money from Russia, though he defended its cooperation with United Russia as an attempt to restore political, economic and cultural ties.