Page 50 - bne IntelliNews magazine February 2025

50 I Eurasia bne February 2025
Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili (left) with Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili. / Georgian Dream via Facebook
On December 27, the US did indeed impose sanctions on Ivanishvili, accusing him of undermining the country’s democratic institutions and Euro-Atlantic aspirations and advancing Kremlin interests in Georgia. Later, on January
7, the diplomat and former coordinator for sanctions policy at the US State Department, Daniel Fried, commented in an interview with Voice of America that the sanctions against Georgia’s richest man were imposed under an executive order targeting Russian agents or individuals acting in Russia’s interests. “This indicated the United States has evidence of Ivanishvili’s actions on behalf of the Kremlin,” he added.
GD critics such as Georgia’s former president Salome Zourabichvili have long pointed to a friendly relationship between the GD founder and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Ivanishvili has deliberately ensured the details
of his personal and professional life – including any links he may have to Moscow – remain murky.
With regards to Gomelauri, GD’s statement highlights how the interior minister, who was sanctioned by the US under the Magnitsky Act on December
state”, claims that “the deeper the roots of the GWP in a country, and the more entrenched the ‘deep state network’, the more anti-Georgian the attitude of the country towards Georgia and the Georgian people”.
The party claims that “every politician and bureaucrat who makes anti- Georgian statements, be it a president, prime minister, parliamentarian, MEP, diplomat or official, is a member of the ‘deep state’ network, which operates according to the instruction of the GWP”.
Sanctions
According to GD’s statement, Western financial sanctions and visa restrictions imposed on a number of Georgian officials and politicians in recent months are “anti-Georgian” measures “imposed by the “GWP” and “deep state” and have no valid basis.
The ruling party highlighted the Baltic states, which were among the first countries to sanction GD officials in December 2024 following incidents
of brutal police violence against pro-EU protesters in Tbilisi, as having “completely lost their sovereignty” and acting “at the behest of the GWP” and “through the actions of ‘deep state’”.
The statement pointed too to the Ukrainian government, which was also quick to impose sanctions on GD, and whose “top officials openly called on
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the Georgian government to open a second front”, a move which, according to GD, proves Ukraine’s subordination to the GWP.
In its January 8 statement, the GD Political Council defended the party’s founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, as well as incumbent Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri, against Western sanctions, arguing that its founder was “punished for peace” and for “replacing bloody authoritarianism
“The party claims that “every politician and bureaucrat who makes anti-Georgian statements, be it a president, prime minister, parliamentarian, MEP, diplomat or official, is a member of the
‘deep state’ network, which operates according to the instruction of the GWP”
in Georgia with democratic rule”. The Political Council painted the billionaire, who led GD to its first election victory in 2012, as the country’s redeemer following the nine-year rule of United National Movement (UNM) founder Mikheil Saakashvili. The statement labels Saakashvili a “dictator” who instigated a war with Russia in 2008 and led a regime of torture, murder, “media-grabbing” and election fraud.
19, and the “heroic police officers” under his command, “are being punished for effectively preventing three violent attempts of the government coup in
the last two years”. This alludes to protests movements in Georgia in March 2023 and spring 2024 against GD’s controversial “foreign agent law”, and the ongoing pro-EU, anti-government protests which began following GD’s alleged rigging of the October 26