GEORGIA: Ex-Official Organized a Murder? & more – 31st Dec 2025

Gamarjobat from Gracia! This is the Rorshok Georgia Update from the 31st of December twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Georgia.

Kicking things off this week, on Monday, the 29th, the Ministry of Internal Affairs held a briefing about an infamous murder that took place back in March, when a hitman in the middle of Chavchavadze street in Tbilisi, gunned down businessman Levan Jangveladze.

Authorities say they have fully solved the case and found that the chief organizer of the hit was Otar Partskhaladze, who briefly held the position of Prosecutor General under the Georgian Dream or the Kotsebi in twenty thirteen. Apparently, Parstkhaladze and Jangveladze had a long-standing business conflict.

Last year the US and Britain sanctioned Parstkhaladze for spreading Russian influence in Georgia. He is currently a Russian citizen, with several businesses and connections to Russian authorities. Bidzina Ivanishvili’s son, Bera, is also a godfather to Partskhaladze’s grandson. His extradition from Russia to Georgia is highly unlikely.

Next up. On Thursday, the 25th, Authorities arrested Bacho Akhalaia, the former Minister of Defence under the United National Movement or Natsebi. They accuse him of organizing the event of the 4th of October, when anti-Kotsebi demonstrators led by several members of the Natsebi tried to storm the presidential palace. Over forty participants were arrested.

Bacho Akhalaia was not present during those events. However, authorities say that he was in charge of organizing a coup attempt and was using his mobile device to give orders.

Akhalaia is infamous in Georgia, his name is strongly associated with inhuman practices in Georgian prisons during the Natsebi rule. He served nine years in prison for abuses of power, then emigrated to Poland and returned to Georgia several months ago.

Speaking of former ministers of defense, Juansher Burchuladze, who held this position from twenty twenty-one to twenty twenty-four, is currently on trial for abusing his powers to receive illegal income and failing to declare a house he bought in Spain for half a million Euros. On Thursday, the 25th, during his trial, Burchiladze said that the charges against him are absurd and the evidence presented by the prosecution is indirect and has been changed several times. He also said that in a normal country, no one, including the prosecutor's side, would take the current evidence against him seriously.

Minister of Defence seems like the most risky position to occupy in the Government. Apart from Akhalaia and Burchuladze, two other former ministers, Gogi Baramia and Irakli Okruashvili, are also in prison and a third one, Davit Kezerashvil, has been avoiding the same fate by living outside the country for a decade.

On another note, On Thursday, the 25th, during an interview with the main state propaganda channel Imedi, the Kotsebi President Mikheil Kavelashvili, compared the pro-European protesters to flies. He said that, like the fly that, even in a beautiful garden, will ignore flowers to look for feces, the radical opposition is unable to see all the good the Kotsebi were able to accomplish in the country. He also said that, unlike them, the Kotsebi supporters are like hard working bees, who are always attracted to flowers.

On the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin honored several Kremlin propagandists, including one of Georgian ethnicity, Tina Kandelaki. During the ceremony, Kandelaki shared a story from her last visit to Georgia five years ago. She said that back then the head of the Georgian Church, Patriarch Ilia II, specifically asked her to tell Putin that he prays for him.

When asked about this story, spokesperson of the church, Andria Jagmaidze did not directly answer the question but said that in twenty thirteen during Illia II’s visit to Moscow, he told Vladimir Putin and the head of Russian Church that occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is Georgia’s “bleeding wound” and relations between two countries will only improve when those lands will be returned to Georgia.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the 30th, Zhou Qian, China’s ambassador to Georgia, released a statement criticizing the US for selling eleven billion dollars worth of weapons to Taiwan. He called the sale a dangerous move that undermined international order. The ambassador said China expects Georgia and the rest of the world to support its upcoming retaliatory measures against Washington.

On Thursday, the 25th, Mamuka Mamulashvili, Commander of the Georgian National Legion in Ukraine, announced that a park in Kyiv now bears the name of his volunteer unit. The Kyiv City Council and Mayor Vitali Klitschko approved this honor with a unanimous vote to recognize the Georgians fighting for Ukraine. The park sits on a street named after the iconic Georgian singer Vakhtang Kikabidze, who was a devoted supporter of the Ukrainian people.

Mamulashvili says this tribute marks a historic moment in the friendship between the two nations. He believes the park ensures that future generations will remember the Georgian volunteers who stood by Ukraine during its most difficult times.

In some unusual news. On Thursday, the 25th, Authorities arrested a person who took hostage his own seventy-five-year-old grandmother. His demands were even more unusual. He threatened to kill his grandmother if his ex-wife, who currently does not live in Georgia, would not be returned to him. Luckily, authorities arrested him and his grandma was left unharmed. Now he faces up to fourteen years in prison.

On Wednesday, the 31st, the Public Broadcaster terminated the contract of veteran broadcast director Kakha Melikidze, who has worked at the channel since nineteen eighty-nine. The channel says his public statements damaged their reputation and violated internal rules. However, staff advocates say management is punishing Melikidze for exposing political pressure.

Earlier this year, Melikidze revealed that managers forced him to repeatedly show Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze during national football matches, even when it violated international broadcasting standards. This firing follows a year of similar dismissals of high-profile journalists and the closing of independent news programs.

Supporters view his removal as a move to silence employees who speak out about political interference at the state-funded station.

In related news. On Saturday, the 27th, the Public Broadcaster announced that a suspected large-scale cyberattack on its main servers knocked the station off the air. This technical failure prevented the channel from broadcasting live for two days. The broadcaster already asked investigative authorities to launch a formal inquiry into the incident to find those responsible.

A new analysis of Georgia's economy published on Wednesday, the 24th, reveals how Georgia’s growing GDP might not be reflecting the realities of life in the country. One of the examples in the article shows that over 3 billion Lari, which is over a Billion dollars, of Georgia’s GDP in twenty twenty-four came from serving as a tax haven for the IT industry. Because of the very liberal tax regime, many international firms book their profits in Georgia even if their developers and operations are located elsewhere. This means that while the national economic data looks impressive, a lot of that money never actually enters the local economy or reaches the people.

The report warns that Georgia is following in the footsteps of countries like Ireland, where leprechaun economics creates a massive gap between official statistics and the financial reality for regular citizens.

Want to read the full piece in English? Link in the show notes.

Closing this edition, last month, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced sweeping changes to Higher education, saying that the new changes (which is actually education degradation) will streamline education and make it more compatible with the country’s needs. The critics of the reform see the changes as a further way to isolate Georgia and undo all the reforms that were supposed to integrate Georgia with European higher education.

You can read an in-depth analysis of the changes and what they mean for the future of Georgian education in an English-language article with the show notes.

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

t want to wish you an awesome: 2026

Nakhvamdis!