EU Sanctions Envoy, David O’Sullivan, who is visiting Georgia with US and UK colleagues, on Wednesday, said “Georgian authorities are taking very seriously the issue of not allowing this country to be used as a platform for circumvention.”

EU official noted that “we come here in a spirit of partnership and cooperation. Particularly from the European Union, we have an important bilateral agenda between Georgia and the European Union, whom we hope someday to welcome as a member of the European Union.”

Below is his full speech as delivered:

Since Russia’s illegal full-scale, and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the international community has put in place an unprecedented level of sanctions. The purpose of these sanctions is to undermine Russia’s ability to wage this war, to deprive the Russian government of the revenue to wage this war, and to impose a heavy economic cost on Russia generally for this brutal and unprovoked war, which they’re now waging.

We are particularly looking now at the question of possible circumvention of our sanctions. And, in particular, we are focused on 38 battlefield products, which are found on the battlefield by the Ukrainians, and which are used to make Russian weapons more lethal, smarter, and more deadly. And we are particularly concerned if there’s any circumvention of the sanctions on these products. This has led us to visit a range of countries in the last few months, sometimes together, sometimes separately, and we found ourselves, in the last two days, here in Georgia.

I have to say that Georgia, of course, is not implementing these sanctions. We are, perhaps, disappointed that is not the case, as a country, which has aspirations to be a member of the European Union, we would ultimately like a high degree of alignment also on foreign policy. But we also understand the very specific situation in which Georgia finds itself both economically, in terms of geography, and in terms of close contacts with Russia in many ways. So, we understand that they’re not going to implement our sanctions. But, I have to say that what we have seen over the last two days has confirmed to us that the Georgian authorities are taking very seriously the issue of not allowing this country to be used as a platform for circumvention. And they have put in place significant measures of controlling the exports, of possible export from Georgia of the most sensitive 38 products, and the same is true across financial sanctions, where they have put in place very close vigilance.

And we are frankly impressed with the measures which they have taken. I want to make it clear that we come here in a spirit of partnership and cooperation. Particularly from the European Union, we have an important bilateral agenda between Georgia and the European Union, whom we hope someday to welcome as a member of the European Union. And this issue of sanctions, which is going to be with us frankly for probably quite a long time, we have to avoid that this becomes an irritant or an obstacle to the development of our closer bilateral relations.

I’m happy to say that what we’ve seen over the last few days leads me to conclude that for the moment that is absolutely not the case, and I see no reason why that should change. So, this has been a very useful visit, very productive, and, as I say, we leave with a generally very positive impression of the manner in which the Georgian authorities are making sure that this country is not used as a platform for circumvention of European Union sanctions.”