Russia's southern neighbour 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 the republic of Abkhazia broke away from the Republic of Georgia; 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 favour 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 WW2 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.