Georgia: Russian Lawmakers Want to Strip Georgian Foreign Minister of Citizenship

A group of Russian MPs is calling for revoking Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze's Russian citizenship.

Semion Bagdasarov of the Fair Russia Party told Russia's legislative assembly on November 3 that Vashadze, who holds both Georgian and Russian citizenship, is engaged in "anti-Russian activities."

"Capitalizing on this [Russian citizenship], he freely travels around trying to form a movement of an anti-Russian nature," Bagdasrov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying. Bagdasrov proposed that the Duma send a request to the Russian Foreign Ministry to cancel Vashadze's passport.

Vashadze is married to Georgian ballerina Nino Ananiashvili, a former prima ballerina for Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, who is now the artistic director for the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre.

Playing on the notion that Russia is the primary successor state of the old Soviet Union, Georgian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ia Makharashvili told a November 2 news conference that Vashadze is proud to join the list of the former Soviet state's exiled cultural figures, such as cellist Mstislav Rostrapovich and dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.