Monday Cable – September 15, 2025

Lots of ink has been spilled about Georgia’s “Rustaveli avenue politics”: careers, administrations, and regimes have risen and fallen at the symbolic gathering space in front of the parliament. It seemed that only a politician with genuine charisma, vision, and chutzpah could shift the invisible spot where the nerve points of Georgia’s politics converge. Kakha Kaladze managed it. True, he just moved that point slightly down the road, but after all, he is just a simple man with a penchant for designer clothes. His Melikishvili Avenue campaign office has been THE place to be seen last week. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (especially) have all made their appearance. But let’s take things in order, shall we?

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Dare…

Setting up the campaign office of the Georgian Dream’s candidate for Tbilisi mayor on Melikishvili Street was a daring step, bordering on carelessness. For over 280 days, opposition forces of all stripes have been protesting. Two streams of the regulars – those who doggedly block Rustaveli Avenue and those who come down from the Public Broadcaster – have to pass the spot, now adorned with larger-than-life (albeit slightly lifeless) portraits of Kaladze, the erstwhile national football team captain, and a Calvin Klein model of yore. This was going to get ugly, and it did, it seems, at the initiative of the GD militants.

On Monday, two groups of Georgian Dream supporters took a small group of the protesters into scissors and pummeled them in front of the office. The police came late, were essentially inert, and were hit as bystanders, too. The violence was so apparently wanton, it looked pre-planned, yet at the same time so grotesque (one assailant was seen scrambling to seek shelter behind the police lines after the young girl he struck lashed back with a handbag) that it achieved an effect opposite of intimidation. Insults were hurled back. More people hit the streets in the days that followed. Attempts by Kaladze and GD PM Kobakhidze to portray the targeted female protesters as “not women, some other kind of race, having only a physical appearance of women” backfired badly. (Misogyny aside for a second, did they actually subscribe to the notion that gender is socially constructed and performative?!). As expected, GD leaders accused protesters of provoking violence (prompting a relevant investigation).

The violence brought more people into the streets in the following days. Facing a larger crowd, the GD militants stayed behind the shuttered doors. The Police moved to detain two of the GD supporters who were caught in the act, for committing group violence charges, only to release them shortly after, citing the lack of complaints. Meanwhile, a student activist arrested for defacing Kaladze’s campaign posters was also nabbed and let on bail, meaning the criminal prosecution against her continues.

As the week ended, thousands marched on Saturday evening from Tbilisi State University to Rustaveli Avenue near Parliament, in a rally planned weeks in advance and dedicated to defending the EU visa-free regime. Marking the 290th day of non-stop protests, the rally drew a large turnout, no doubt fuelled by Melikishvili street events earlier.

…Double Dare.

As the street protests seem to have regained their momentum, one of the United National Movement’s leaders, Levan Khabeishvili, was arrested exiting the opposition-leaning TV. Prosecutors charged him with offering bribes to police and inciting a coup. His colleague Murtaz Zodelava, who was accompanying Khabeishvili, was also arrested. While the court sent Khabeishvili to pretrial detention, it ordered Zodelava’s release on bail.

Khabeishvili was once UNM chairman. Militant, rather than nuanced, he is eager to jump into the melee. He was severely beaten by special forces in May 2024 while protesting against the repressive laws, and then faded somewhat from view. But he recently resurfaced in an unusual role, venting convincing-sounding allegations about divisions and infights within the Georgian Dream. The massive purges within GD and internal investigations of the old guard on corruption charges gave Khabeishvili’s words credence. GD began to suspect internal leaks, and GD Kobakhidze said Khabeishvili was getting paid. Of course, the formal reason for the arrest is different: the Security Service interpreted Khabeishvili’s campaign promise that all police officers who “take the side of the people” will be rewarded with 200 thousand GEL after the opposition wins elections as vote-bribing. Three police officers apparently gave testimonies about “feeling offended” by the offer.

Housekeeping!

Alongside Khabeishvili, the Security Services (now chaired by GD spokesperson, Mamuka Mdinaradze) also arrested the former GD Minister of Defense Juansher Burchuladze, on corruption charges. Burchuladze, who is rumored to be a close associate of the former PM, Irakli Garibashvili, claimed he had a concussion and was brought to the hospital. He was later reported as saying GD’s actions were “un-European.” How do times change: in 2023, Burchuladze was railing against “liberalism”, as threatening Georgia’s sovereignty by the depletion of the country’s “genetic pool.”

Retarded fuse

Security Services arrested two Ukrainians who they say were transporting explosives under orders from Kyiv. Suspects said they were targeting Russia, but Georgian Security Services pointed to Tbilisi as the target, linking Kyiv to (yet another) pre-election coup plot. Pro-government media floated the name of former Defense and Interior Minister Bacho Akhalaia (2009–2012), one of the favorite UNM bogeymen. “The arrest of Levan Khabeishvili by Ivanishvili, and propagandistic preparation for the arrest of Bacho Akhalaia as ‘terrorist,’ to me means only one thing,” political analyst Ghia Nodia wrote on Facebook. “Bidzina really fears a revolution.” Read about Bacho Akhalaia here — one of the most controversial figures of the former UNM government, who was released from prison in 2022 after serving a nine-year term. This story may shape the pre-election campaign by GD – or fizzle out next week.

Bitesize

• GD keeps singling out the German Ambassador Peter Fischer, and in a complete non-sequitur, accused him of backing “extremists” at Kaladze’s office. Berlin and other embassies denounced the ruling party’s attacks. 
• The OSCE/ODIHR stated that it cannot deploy an observation mission due to late notice and GD promptly blamed some (apparently “deep state”) pressure. CEC paraded the list of international and local monitors, which looked barely credible. Estonian Election Commission, while on that list, said it won’t send observers. Government-linked TVs hit social media over the weekend, saying the ODIHR Mission is going to observe the Czech elections on even shorter notice. OSCE explained this was not true.
• The Prosecutor’s Office said the bank accounts and assets of the parents of Giorgi Bachiashvili, Bidzina Ivanishvili’s former associate, imprisoned for laundering a large sum in cryptocurrency, have been frozen. GD members in the past said Bachiashvili, whom many consider Ivanishvili’s “personal prisoner,” was one of the inspirations behind draconian legislative changes that ban individuals convicted of grave financial crimes from leaving Georgia even after serving their jail terms, until damages are repaid, while also allowing the freezing of assets belonging to their family members and relatives.
• A Georgian man who fought for Ukraine was detained in Armenia, facing possible extradition to Russia.
• Jailed journalist Mzia Amaghlobeli was named a laureate of a Free Media Award, and was reported to be among the Sakharov Prize nominees.
• Tbilisi City Court handed down another protest-related guilty verdict, sentencing a Russian activist couple to 8.5 years in prison on drug charges.
• The U.S. Helsinki Commission held a hearing on Georgia’s slide into authoritarianism, while Washington was missing among the signatories of the joint statement of 37 OSCE members condemning GD.
• Also, nine international human rights groups expressed concern over Georgia’s “all-out assault” on civil society and called on the EU to respond to the crackdown urgently.
• Transparency International Georgia reported millions in gifts declared by officials, mostly from persistently (and oddly) wealthy close family members.
• Official statistics showed FDI down 12% in Q2 2025, while GD’s cabinet reconvened after summer break and touted governance progress, pledged economic growth, and promised to get tougher on crime.

Past imperfect: From Our Archives

On September 15, 2016, Civil.ge reported: “A delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said after visiting Georgia this week that ‘there was an environment for democratic elections.” A seven-member delegation, led by Lithuanian MP Emanuelis Zingeris from the group of European People’s Party (EPP), visited Georgia on September 13-14 to assess the election campaign and political climate ahead of the October 8 parliamentary elections. The delegation said it “saw a pluralistic political and media landscape and a working legal framework.” You can go down that memory lane here. 

On the same days in 2021, Civil.ge reported several pieces on the alleged leak of Security Service files. “An individual claiming to have worked at the State Security Service, Georgia’s domestic intelligence agency, has released publicly numerous files containing information allegedly gathered on senior clergymen through spying,” the September 13 report says. Other reports indicated the files also showed SSSG agents spied on ambassadors, including the EU’s Carl Hartzell, Israel’s Ran Gidor, as well as some U.S. diplomats and employees of other missions. Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili suggested that his predecessor Giorgi Gakharia, who had broken with GD earlier that year, and his affiliates might have been involved in the leak. Who would have thought that in 2024, the ring of corruption allegations would have been tightening around Garibashivli? Sic transit gloria mundi.

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