Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on October 4 that Moscow is ready for friendly relations with “the Georgian people,” Russian news agencies reported. He also hinted that the Georgian leadership’s anti-Russian stance is encouraged through foreign “patronage” of Saakashvili’s administration.

“Russia is ready to build the kind of relations with the Georgian people it deserves… We are sincerely interested in friendly relations with the Georgian people. We want to live in friendship and cooperation with our Georgian friends,” Lavrov said in Strasbourg while addressing the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE).

He also said that Russia “will not yield to provocations of the Saakashvili’s regime.”

“Unfortunately, the regime that came into power in Georgia – and by the way I do not remember that the Parliamentary Assembly [of the Council of Europe] has discussed the issue on how the current regime came into power, which happened not fully through the constitutional way – this regime enjoys apparent patronage. I am sure that this fact [of foreign support towards] anti-Russian stance of Tbilisi triggered this regime to go beyond [its] limits,” Lavrov said.