In the interview with TASS, the President of the Russian Federation spoke about relations with Georgia and said that the authorities of that country had simply turned away from Moscow. He said Russia is not guilty of cooling relations between the two countries.

Answering question of the journalist about Russia’s close neighbors distancing themselves from Russia, Putin said: “They didn’t just distance themselves – they jumped aside. Through no fault of ours. They should thank Mikhail Nikolayevich [Saakashvili] for that.

He is running around, from square to square, on rooftops, like a tomcat. We had a lot of discussions with him on the subject when he was still in office. I think that Mikhail Nikolayevich would recall that.

I told him: Listen, don’t you ever try to deal with South Ossetia and Abkhazia with the use of force. “No, no, I’ll never do that”, he said. And he still stormed in, stormed in and got knocked back!”, - concluded Putin.