Georgia Missed Chance to Get Air Defense System from France in 2021
The Georgian government could have had a fully developed air defense system from France by 2021, but the deal was broken. Former Defense Minister Irakli Alasania said this in an interview with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service.
Alasania served as Defense Minister from 2012 to 2014. He said that the deal with France was already agreed upon when the government tried to pressure him to withdraw before signing. This happened after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Georgia had violated fair trial rights in a high-profile case involving Defense Ministry officials at the time.
In 2013, Alasania met with then-French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. France agreed to provide an air defense system on loan if Georgia sent troops to the Central African Republic. The agreement was set to be signed in October 2014, but on the eve of signing, Alasania received a phone call from a senior Georgian official urging him to back out.
Despite the pressure, Alasania went ahead with the signing. He said that the deal had been agreed upon with all relevant Georgian and French institutions and officials. As he was about to sign, five employees of the Ministry of Defense were arrested in what he saw as an attempt to stop the deal.
Alasania signed the agreement anyway. The disruption of Georgia’s air defense deal was not just a locally generated idea, but also influenced by Russia. Alasania recalled that Russian representatives made statements against the deal at the beginning of discussions.
On October 28, 2024, officials from the Ministry of Defense were arrested and charged with misspending GEL 4.1 million in an alleged sham tender in 2013 for the laying of fiber optic cable in 2014. They denied the charges. In 2016, they were sentenced to seven years in prison for embezzlement. However, their sentence was reduced in 2017 after a reclassification of their charges.
The court’s decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, which refused to grant them leave to appeal. Eventually, then-President Giorgi Margvelashvili pardoned them and they were released in 2017. Despite their release, they took their case to the ECHR, which found violations of the European Convention on Human Rights regarding the right to a fair trial.
The controversial “cable case” led to the first major rift within the GD party. The GD’s then-PM Irakli Garibashvili dismissed Alasania in November 2014, about a month after he signed the agreement with the French side on the development of the air defense system.
Alasania said that the deal between Georgia and France is still in force. He called the GD government’s decision to block the project an “unforgivable mistake.” If the GD government had pursued the project, “Georgia’s air and all of our critical infrastructure would be protected by 2021,” Alasania said.
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