Georgia wants Russia to leave its land in a Ukraine peace deal

Bloomberg

Georgia’s president said Russia must be required to abandon its nearly 15-year-long occupation of her nation’s territory as part of an eventual peace deal to end the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.
“Russia has to learn where its borders are,” President Salome Zourabichvili said in an interview in the capital, Tbilisi. “The Georgian issues should be on the table because nobody should think that this war can be resolved without Russia retreating from all the occupied territories” in the region, she said.
Zourabichvili’s call for restoring the regional order hinges on a decisive defeat in Ukraine for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a moment she claimed was fast approaching. “Russia already practically lost the battles if not completely the war,” she said at her presidential residence, its facade festooned with the flags of Georgia and Ukraine.
Russia sent tanks and troops to within 20 miles of Tbilisi during a brief war with Georgia in 2008 over two secessionist areas that the Kremlin later recognized as independent, marking the first time it unilaterally redrew the borders of states that emerged from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia has stationed its military in Abkhazia and South Ossetia since then, occupying about of fifth of Georgian territory that remains internationally recognized as part of the Caucasus republic.

‘Big Mistake’
Without requiring Russia to make a full withdrawal as part of surrender terms, “the western world will make another big mistake — as big as 2008, 2014,” Zourabichvili said, referring to Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
Almost a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, the outcome of the war remains far from clear as the two sides prepare for potentially decisive battles in the spring. Ukraine’s US and European allies have stepped up shipments of arms to bolster Kyiv’s forces against a large-scale offensive that officials fear Russia may be planning.
French-born Zourabichvili’s criticisms of Russia put her at odds with Georgia’s government, which has been careful to avoid antagonizing Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.
While he has condemned Russia’s “unjustified” aggression, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili hasn’t imposed sanctions on Russia and has refused to provide military aid to Ukraine, accusing critics of his policy last month of seeking to “create a second front in Georgia.”