President Saakashvili said at a meeting with a group of businesspeople in Barcelona on February 18, that with the economic crisis Russia could not afford to be aggressive towards its neighbors.

Saakashvili is visiting Spain with an aim to, as his press office said, “attract foreign investments” to Georgia.

“Russia has an economic crisis,” French news agency AFP reported quoting Saakashvili. “It has supported an economy that it does not know how to modernize. With the drop in oil prices, we see how its economy is collapsing… It cannot allow itself to become aggressive.”

According to AFP Saakashvili also said at the same meeting joining the European Union was more important to Tbilisi than being part of NATO since entering Europe “is like coming home.”

He also called on businessmen at the meeting to invest in Georgia, which he said is now a “stable” country where corruption had been rooted out and with “little bureaucracy and low taxes,” according to AFP.