Georgia’s
prime minister announces crackdown on dissent after Tbilisi protests
Irakli
Kobakhidze accused EU ambassador of supporting ‘attempt to overthrow
constitutional order’
Deborah
Cole and agencies
Sun 5 Oct
2025 12.25 BST
Georgia’s
prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, has announced a sweeping crackdown on
dissent, accusing demonstrators who tried to storm the presidential palace of
aiming to topple his government and blaming the European Union for interference
in his country.
Kobakhidze
levelled his allegations a day after protesters attempted to breach the
presidential palace as local elections were being held. They were stopped by
riot police using pepper spray and water cannon.
“No one
will escape responsibility. This includes political responsibility,” the
Georgian news agency Interpress quoted the prime minister as saying.
Officers
detained at least five demonstrators, including two members of the United
National Movement, the largest opposition party, and the opera singer turned
activist Paata Burchuladze.
Local
media cited the health ministry as saying 21 members of the security forces and
six demonstrators had been injured in clashes in the centre of Tbilisi.
The South
Caucasus country has been in turmoil since Kobakhidze’s ruling Georgian Dream
(GD) party claimed victory in last year’s parliamentary election, which the
pro-EU opposition says was stolen. Since then, Tbilisi’s talks on joining the
bloc have been frozen.
Kobakhidze
said up to 7,000 people attended Saturday’s opposition rally but their “attempt
to overthrow the constitutional order” had been thwarted despite what he said
was EU backing.
“Several
people have already been arrested – first and foremost the organisers of the
attempted overthrow,” he told reporters, saying the country’s main opposition
force “will no longer be allowed to be active in Georgian politics”.
Opposition
figures had called for a “peaceful revolution” against GD, which they accuse of
being pro-Russian and authoritarian. The party has been in power since 2012.
Thousands
of protesters gathered in the heart of the capital, waving Georgian and EU
flags, after months of Kremlin-style raids on independent media, restrictions
on civil society and the detention of dozens of opponents and activists. The
jailed reformist ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili had urged supporters to
protest on election day for what he called the “last chance” to save Georgian
democracy.
Kobakhidze
accused the EU’s ambassador to Georgia, Paweł Herczyński, of meddling. “You
know that specific people from abroad have even expressed direct support for
all this, for the announced attempt to overthrow the constitutional order,” he
said, adding that Herczyński “bears special responsibility in this context”.
“[Herczyński]
should come out, distance himself and strictly condemn everything that is
happening on the streets of Tbilisi,” said Kobakhidze.
Demonstrators
attempted to reach the presidential palace in Tbilisi on Saturday. Photograph:
Zurab Tsertsvadze/AP
In July,
the EU’s diplomatic service rejected what it called “disinformation and
baseless accusations” about the EU’s alleged role in Georgia.
The
pro-western opposition has been staging protests since last October, when GD
won a parliamentary election that its critics say was marred by fraud. The
party has rejected accusations of vote-rigging. GD claimed victory in every
municipality across the country of 3.7 million people in an election boycotted
by the two largest opposition blocs.
Georgia
has the aim of EU accession written into its constitution and has long been
among the most pro-western of the Soviet Union’s successor states. Its ties
with the west have been strained since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine
in 2022.
GD is
controlled by its founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country’s richest man and a
former prime minister, and denies it is pro-Moscow. It says it wants to join
the EU while preserving peace with Russia.
Reuters
and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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