Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Zayna Badawi.

My guest is the President of Georgia Salome Zorabeshvili, who's on a visit to London.

Her country, which was part of the Soviet Union, shares a long border with Russia

and its capital, Tbilisi, is just a few kilometres away from thousands of Russian troops and tanks stationed

in two Moscow-backed separatist enclaves in Georgia. So, how should Georgia manage its relations with Russia

whilst at the same time push for closer ties with the West? Is this a balancing act that can be achieved? President Salome Zorabashvili, welcome to

hard talk. What was your reaction when you heard about the Russian-made missile dropping on Polish

territory killing two people? Very worried, like I guess the rest of the word, but maybe even more worried.

And I think with my team, we spend the night listening to the news and what was happening.

Although, in a way, it was going against my feeling that the nuclear balance is working so well even today that this line that is protected by

NATO is something that everybody is very careful about. And I was not thinking beforehand that Russia

deliberately would dare to touch any part of that territory.

But everything can happen and there can always be a miscalculation and there have been a number of

miscalculations by the Russian leaders. So nothing was excluded and so very worried.

It has highlighted fears, hasn't it, in your neighbourhood?

I mean, Georgia has a border of nearly a thousand kilometres with Russia.

You have Russian troops and tanks stationed very near your capital in the two pro-Moscow-backed

separatist enclave, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

You're a small nation of barely four million.

Your army is about 37,000.

I mean, Russia, if it wanted to, could take Georgia in an afternoon.

Do you think it might want to absorb you?

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