• ‘I am sure their days are numbered’;
• Russia ‘wants Georgia to be its slave’; 
• ‘Some Georgian politicians miss licking Russian soldiers’ dirty underwear’;
• ‘Russian Church declared a crusade for restoration of Soviet Union’;

The boos and whistles that greeted Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, when he stepped into the ring at Olympiysky Stadium in Moscow after a martial arts fight on Sunday, signaled “the beginning of the end for the authoritarian rule in Russia,” President Saakashvili said.  

“You’ve seen how Putin was whistled. This is the beginning of the end for the authoritarian rule in Russia. I am sure that their days are numbered,” Saakashvili said while speaking in a televised meeting with cabinet ministers in Kutaisi on November 22.

“For Georgia today it is very important to keep the pace of development, because in Russia there also are a lot of well-disposed people – not in the Kremlin or its satellite organizations – who are delighted with our reforms,” he said.

Saakashvili said that top goal for the Russian leadership “is to topple the government” of Georgia. “Russia will even make a deal with devil – in or outside of Georgia – to achieve this,” he said.

Saakashvili made the remarks while commenting on an announcement by rating agency Standard & Poor's, which has raised Georgia’s sovereign-credit rating one notch to BB-, pointing to the country’s strong growth prospects.

“Raising Georgia’s credit rating in these conditions… means that Georgia has overcome what others would not have overcome; Georgia has accomplished actually something impossible,” Saakashvili said.

He said that in four-five years the process of Georgia becoming “a new Hong Kong, a new economic tiger of the world and the economic, cultural, tourism and political center of this region” would become irreversible.

During the same televised cabinet sitting, Saakashvili also said that in the past Russian military barracks were located on the place where now new development projects were underway in Kutaisi, where Russian soldiers “were hanging their dirty underwear.”

“Some Georgian politicians miss licking that underwear; but that’s not what the Georgian people want. We want to go where our future will be protected,” he said without naming any of the Georgian politician.

“You know that the Russian [Orthodox] Church has declared a crusade for restoration of the Soviet Union, that means, for putting an end to Georgia’s independence,” he said, apparently referring to remarks by head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, who said last week that the collapse of the Soviet Union was negative.

He said that Russia “wants Georgia to be its slave.” “So if someone wants to follow this path, let them take a one-way ticket for Kutaisi-Moscow flight,” Saakashvili said. “We will have such flights from Kutaisi – we will send there forever those politicians who want to be with them [Russia] and we will receive from there Russian tourists, who will gradually replace Russian tanks and Russian soldiers here.”