 Kovalenko left Tbilisi on 30 September with 22 Russian diplomats on a flight to Moscow.Kovalenko speaks Russian, Arabic, Belarusian and French.On 24 September 2007, the then Russian ambassador to Georgia, Vyacheslav Kovalenko, became embroiled in a controversy over his statement at a televised informal meeting with Georgian intellectuals organized by the Tbilisi-based Russian-Georgian Friendship Union in which he referred to the Georgian people as a "dying-out nation", and announced to the Georgians that they will soon become extinct in the face of globalization while Russia is "a large country, a huge country.