A new hero: Salome Samadashvili

Salome Samadashvili is a new personal hero for me. She's the Georgian ambassador to the EU.

I saw her on Lateline last night. The day before, she broke down into tears during a press conference.

To give you an insight as to why that helps make her a hero...

TONY JONES: Now you were very emotional personally, you were very personally emotional about this yesterday. Were you responding to the reality that Europe and the United States were not going to be coming to your rescue if you were invaded by Russia?

SALOME SAMADASHVILI: It's very difficult not to be emotional when your country is attacked and under siege. Yesterday there was a moment when I think all of us believed that it would take something extraordinary to prevent disappearance of our country from the face of the earth. You know, we are people, most of the Georgian leadership are people like me, who have lived in the West for a long time. We left in the '90s to receive our education in the West, and we all realise that we want to do is go back to Georgia and build our country up, and we want to live in our country and we want our people to have a better future, and this is what we have devoted our lives to. And to realise that just in a matter of hours all your dreams for your country, for your future, might just disappear and you might become a province of the Russian Federation administered by the hated Russian security agencies, and, you know, having the governors who represent the same kind of mentality, that will, that meant the end of any future for my country and for my people. So it's very difficult not to be emotional. This concerns the future of each and every one of us in Georgia, and you know, I think it's difficult to stay calm under the circumstances.

All of her answers to questions put to her were to the point, avoiding hyperbole, and utterly genuine in content.

Read the transcript.


Also worth a look: War in South Ossetia.