By recognizing 19th century mass killings of the Circassians as genocide, Georgia aimed at “antagonizing Russia”, MP Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, State Duma, said.

“I regret that the politicians in Georgia failed to withstand a temptation to materialize their own nationalistic complexes at the expense of other peoples,” Kosachev told the Russian news agency Interfax on May 20.

The Georgian lawmakers do not at all care about “really tragic fate of the Circassian people,” he said.

“By doing so they were pursuing their political goals aimed at maximally antagonizing Russia and portraying it [Russia] as a source of all the troubles of the Georgian and other peoples, who were residing in the Russian Empire and later in the Soviet Union,” Kosachev said.