Occupied territories of Georgia
Occupied territories of Georgia () are the territories occupied by Russia after the Russo-Georgian War in 2008. They consist of the regions of Abkhazia and the former South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast of Soviet Georgia (currently divided between several administrative divisions of independent Georgia), whose status is a matter of international dispute.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Russia's southern neighbor Georgia has been another frequent target of Zhirinovsky's rhetoric. After Aslan Abashidze was ousted from power in 2004 as leader of Ajara, an autonomous Georgian region, Zhirinovsky worried that similar revolutions would occur in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Highly critical of Georgia's pro-Western line, he is an energetic supporter of Georgia's breakaway republic of Abkhazia; in a high-profile incident in August 2004, he departed on a campaign to promote a tourist season in Abkhazia aboard a cruise ship which was briefly intercepted by a Georgian coast guard vessel. After war broke out between Russia and Georgia in 2008, Zhirinovsky argued in favor of Russian recognition of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence. "We should have taken the whole territory of Georgia under control," he complained, and "arrested all Georgian officers and taken them here, like to Guantanamo, arrested Saakashvili and handed him over for trial by a military tribunal and gone to the border with Turkey." In 2009, he called the decision to hold NATO military exercises in Georgia during Soviet Victory Day celebrations in Moscow a "total revision of the history of the Great Patriotic War" and suggested that Russia should respond by conducting large-scale joint military drills with Cuba and Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea.
Zhirinovsky has been expelled from Bulgaria for insulting its president and was barred from entry to Germany. In 2005, Kazakhstan declared Zhirinovsky "persona non grata" on the territory of his historical homeland, due to the politician's controversial speech about the change of the Russia-Kazakhstan border, in which he questioned the Kazakhs' place in history.