Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it had protested to the United Nations about Russia’s crackdown on illegal Georgian migrants, demanding a stop to what it called “persecution on ethnic grounds”, AP reports.

The ministry said in a statement that it had turned over materials “on violation of Georgian citizens’ rights” to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and other international organizations.

Moscow responded to Georgia’s brief detention of four alleged Russian spies last month with a sweeping transport and postal blockade and a crackdown on Georgian migrants in Russia — sanctions the Kremlin has refused to drop despite Western calls for restraint.

Russia and Georgia have had a history of friction since they went their separate ways with the 1991 Soviet collapse. That tension increased after Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili came to power in 2004, pledging to bring separatist regions back into fold, bolster ties with the West and lead his nation to join NATO in 2008.

Georgian officials sharply criticized Russia’s tough actions, particularly the deportations of an estimated 800 ethnic Georgians allegedly caught working illegally in Russia and the harassment of Georgian-owned businesses.

The Georgian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Russian authorities had requested schools and universities to provide lists of people with Georgian surnames as part of the continuing crackdown on Georgians in Russia.

It urged Russia “to stop persecutions on ethnic grounds, safeguard universally recognized human rights and freedoms and solve existing political problems through talks and constructive dialogue.”

The ministry said Tuesday that Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili would visit Moscow for talks next week, the first high-level contact since the worst post-Soviet crisis in bilateral relations erupted last month.

Bezhuashvili talked with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov over the phone Tuesday and they agreed to meet in Moscow on Nov. 1-2 at the sidelines of a conference of Black Sea nations, the ministry said.

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