GEORGIA: Courts to Ban Political Parties & more – 17th April 2025

Gamarjobat from Gracia! This is the Rorshok Georgia Update from the 17th of April twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Georgia.

Kicking off this edition, on Monday, the 14th, the ruling party’s legal committee backed a new bill that expands the rights of the constitutional court to ban political parties. The Georgian Dream or the Kotseb had already granted the court the right to prohibit parties that aim to overthrow the government, attack Georgia’s independence, undermine its territorial integrity, promote violence or war, spread hate, or run armed groups. But the new change will make it effectively impossible for the banned parties to reorganize into a new political entity. According to the new bill, if the party has the same goals, members, and policies as an already banned entity, the court can automatically shut it down as well.

It is highly likely that this step was taken after the United National Movement or the Natsebi responded to the threats of being banned by the Kotsebi, saying that they would just create a new party.

In an interview with Russian TV channel MIR on Friday, the 11th, Belarus’s dictator Lukashenko said that Ukraine will undergo the same path that Georgia did. He said that Georgia is now exporting lots of products to Belarus and Russia, because it could not sell them to either the EU or the US. He added that Georgia even hopes to restore its territorial integrity by having closer ties to Russia.

He also said that, like Georgia, Ukraine also tried to become part of NATO and the EU, but failed, and added that when new, more reasonable people come to power, they will have a better approach to Belarus and Russia and eventually join their union.

On that note about Russia, Gennady Gudkov, a former Russian MP and Federal Security Service or FSB lieutenant, now a vocal critic of Putin, said in an interview with Euroscopenews on Friday, the 11th, that Russian FSB agents are permanently stationed in Georgia and collaborate with the government.

Citing Russian oligarchs close to Ivanishvili, he said that Putin allowed Ivanishvili to enter Georgian politics and sell off his Russian assets in exchange for loyalty. Gudkov says that FSB officers enter Georgia with fake documents, rotate in shifts, and maintain control over the political leadership. He warned that Georgia is increasingly following Russia’s authoritarian model. While saying that democratic foundations still exist in Georgia, he believes the country is at risk of losing its European future.

Recall that Gudkov left Russia in twenty nineteen and was labeled an extremist in twenty twenty-four.

Also on Friday, Tea Tsulukiani, one of the leaders of the Kotsebi, caused an uproar when she spoke about the national hero of Georgia, Giorgi Antsukhelidze. Antsukhelidze was a soldier who was captured, tortured and killed by South Ossetian separatists during the two thousand eight Russian-Georgian war and has since become a sign of resistance against the occupiers.

In an interview with Public Broadcaster, Tsulukiani said that it would have been better if Antsukhedze had stayed at home with his children, instead of being sacrificed by Misha Saakashvili, former president of Georgia, for his PR campaign, implying that Misha started the conflict to retake South Ossetia and raise his political popularity among the voters.

Speaking of Tsulukiani—On Monday, the 14th, Gogi Gakharia appeared before the parliamentary investigative committee led by Tsulukiani. He spoke about the twenty nineteen protests known as Gavrilov’s Night, triggered when Russian MP Sergei Gavrilov broke protocol by sitting in the Georgian Parliament Speaker’s chair during an international assembly.

The incident sparked public outrage and violent protests. Gakharia said he opposed Gavrilov’s entry into the country, but then-Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze overruled him. He admitted authorizing water cannons and pepper spray to disperse protesters but denied approving rubber bullets, which blinded two people.

Next Up. On Thursday, the 10th, NGO Reporters Without Borders published an article on their website saying that Georgian authorities denied entry to two French journalists, Clément Girardot and Jérôme Chobeaux, who have been covering pro-European protests against the Kotsebi’s decision to suspend EU accession talks till twenty twenty-eight.

Chobeaux, who was returning to Tbilisi in late March after covering the protest for two months, was detained at the airport for several hours, denied access to his phone and luggage, told to pay two unexplained fines in cash and deported without an official notice.

Girardot, who has worked in Georgia for over ten years, reporting for publications such as Le Monde, was blocked from entering in February.

Reporters without Borders called these actions intimidation and urged France and the EU to pressure Georgia’s government.

To read the full article, check out the link in the show notes.

In other news, on Thursday, the 10th, the UK imposed sanctions on four senior officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs responsible for violating human rights during the crackdown on pro-European protesters. The sanctions include a visa ban, an asset freeze, and director disqualification.

This means that as of now, they can’t enter the UK, and access or profit from any property or assets they have there. Also, people are not allowed to give them funds or resources, directly or indirectly, or help them bypass the sanctions.

The director ban means they can’t hold executive roles in UK companies or foreign companies with strong UK ties—like those operating or owning assets in the country.

Last week, three German parties signed a document to form a governing coalition. Peter Fischer, the German Ambassador to Georgia, has shared a part of the document on Twitter, which says that Georgia can only continue its integration into the EU once the doubts about the country's commitment to a democratic process are resolved. Meanwhile, the coalition will continue to support pro-European forces in Georgia.

On Wednesday, the 16th, Aleksandre Tsuladze, the Minister of Education, outlined a new education plan that sets priorities for the coming years. Alongside goals like modernizing the school system, developing practical skills for the global market, and improving teaching quality, Tsuladze spoke about the plan to introduce Chinese as a secondary language in schools.

While the plan remains in its early stages, it shows Georgia’s interest in strengthening ties with China as relations with the EU continue to worsen—especially after the twenty twenty-four parliamentary elections and the government’s human rights violations against pro-European protesters.

On Wednesday, 16th, the Tbilisi City Court approved the prosecutor’s request to replace Afgan Sadigov’s extradition detention with bail. He left custody the same day. Sadigov, an Azerbaijani journalist who is critical of Aliyev’s regime, fled his country to avoid prosecution. Georgian authorities detained him in Tbilisi last year and planned to extradite him to Azerbaijan. However, the European Court of Human Rights intervened and blocked the extradition until it could make a final ruling on the case, which can take years.

Georgian law limits extradition detention to nine months, which would have expired in early May, so prosecutors had no choice but to ask the court to replace detention with bail, which was set to 5,000 Lari (around 1,800 dollars).

The EU plans to adopt new legislation that will make it easier to suspend the visa-free travel agreement with sixty-one countries, including Georgia. They aim to reach an agreement on the law by the end of the year. The new rules will allow the EU to halt visa-free travel based on political relations, human rights violations, breaches of international law, and failure to follow international court rulings.

Given the strained relationship between the EU and Georgia, along with calls from some MEPs to suspend visa-free travel with Georgia over human rights violations, this could pose a serious risk to the Kotsebi. Visa-free travel is seen as one of their major political achievements, and losing it would likely cause significant backlash, even among their strongest supporters.

Finally, in an interview with Business Press News, statistician Soso Archvadze estimated that traffic congestion in Tbilisi costs the economy over 1 billion lari annually—more than 360 million dollars. He said that each driver loses around 120 hours per year due to persistent traffic problems. With the number of drivers in the city, this adds up to sixty-six million lost hours. Despite this, the number of cars in Tbilisi keeps rising, with 230,000 new vehicles registered in the past five years.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Did you know that the Rorshok Georgia Update is just one of many? We’ve got country updates, and non-county updates, including the Arctic Update, about the area north of the Arctic Circle, the Multilateral Update, about the world’s major multilateral institutions, and the Ocean Update, about the 70% of the world covered in salt water.

To check out the full list of updates, follow the link in the show notes!

Nakhvamdis!