Two weeks after the October 4 election-day tensions, the day continues to haunt Georgia, with the ruling Georgian Dream party tightening its grip on peaceful protests, dozens arrested, and blame and speculation spreading across opposition circles.
The events have sparked a debate: some opposition figures claim the October 4 unrest was a “trap” or even an act of “treason” plotted by the Georgian Dream, while others see it as the outcome of a reckless political gamble. The ruling party, for its part, depicts the episode as a failed coup attempt masterminded from abroad and has unleashed a new wave of repression against dissent.
Below is the summary of the lead-up to October 4, the events of the day itself, and the speculations and developments that have unfolded since.
Before the rally:
The October 4 mass rally, planned to coincide with the partially boycotted municipal vote, was announced in late July by renowned opera singer and activist Paata Burchuladze. He dubbed the event, scheduled for 4 p.m., a “national assembly”. He vowed to “peacefully overthrow” the Georgian Dream government, predicting that the “power transfer” would be completed by 8 p.m. the same day.
The rally was meant to take place amid the ruling party’s continued repression and crackdown on dissent, including the jailing of protesters and opposition members, as well as a series of laws and investigations targeting the media, independent watchdogs, and opposition groups. The demonstration also followed months of continuous peaceful protests across Georgia’s major cities, including in the capital, where demonstrators had blocked Rustaveli Avenue for more than 300 consecutive days.
Several opposition forces, including the United National Movement (UNM) and its key ally, Strategy Aghmashenebeli, came to actively endorse the rally. Other parties boycotting the elections, such as the Federalists and Droa, distanced themselves from the rhetoric of a “peaceful revolution,” yet still urged their supporters to take to the streets and voice their discontent to challenge the legitimacy of the local elections.
Two UNM members, Levan Khabeishvili and Zviad Kuprava, were arrested ahead of the rally for their mobilization efforts, with Khabeishvili initially detained for publicly offering a reward to police officers who refused to disperse protesters. Organizers, including Burchuladze, had openly stated that they expected riot police to switch sides on the day of the demonstration, but didn’t reveal how that was actually going to happen.
October 4 Events
An estimated tens of thousands showed up on the designated day, including many arriving on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue with a dynamic march. Shortly before 7 pm, Burchuladze addressed Tbilisi’s crowded Liberty Square, reading out a declaration and announcing that power had reverted “to the Georgian people.” The singer also said the Interior Ministry must, from then on, “obey” the Georgian people, and called for the arrest of several senior Georgian Dream officials, including Bidzina Ivanishvili, amid the cheers of the crowd.
Next to take the stage was Murtaz Zodelava, co-organizer of the rally and former Prosecutor General under the United National Movement. Zodelava urged a special group of “male force” to “take over the keys of the Presidential Palace as the first step,” soon after which a group of protesters headed to the palace at Atoneli Street, some 200 meters from the rally, quickly tore down the palace railings, and attempted to penetrate the palace premises.
They were quickly repelled by a riot police unit that emerged from inside the palace and used pepper spray. Minutes later, additional units of riot police arrived at the scene with water cannons. Police used ample amounts of tear gas and water cannons to disperse crowds around the palace and cordoned off the larger area. Milder clashes between a smaller group of protesters and police continued for hours. Still, a much larger group of demonstrators stayed at the parliament, some three hundred meters from the epicenter of tensions, rallying peacefully.
According to the Health Ministry, six protesters and 21 police officers were hospitalized during the tensions, including one officer in serious condition. Later, after midnight, police arrested five people, including Burchuladze and Zodelava, who were earlier pronounced as rally organizers.
Trap and Treason?
As the dust settled, speculation began to circulate among some opposition circles that the initial plan had been peaceful, with the fiasco attributed either to a trap set by the authorities or a last-minute betrayal by a “double agent.” Already with the unrest still underway, Salome Zurabishvili, Georgia’s fifth president, called the attempt to take over the presidential palace a “mockery” that she said could “only be staged by the regime to discredit” the ongoing peaceful protests that had continued for more than 300 days.
In his media remarks moments before his arrest at the parliament, Murtaz Zodelava warned not to trust what he called “donors” and “people with resources,” spurring speculations that there must have been some last-minute change of plans. “In a dictatorship, you cannot find a donor. If a donor approaches you, that means they want you to sell out your homeland or your principles,” Zodelava said.
The arguments about “treason” were then voiced by Shukri Burchuladze, Paata Burchuladze’s son, who said his father was convinced that the rally would be peaceful and police would switch sides and join the protesters. “In my view, there was a person or a group of people who had promised the defection of the Special Task Department employees, which in its entirety should have brought about what they had planned and announced. This didn’t happen. So there was a double agent, or a group of double agents,” he told TV Pirveli on October 8, suspecting the involvement of “secret services much more powerful and experienced than in Georgia.”
Shukri Burchuladze was also among those speculating that the fence at the presidential palace had been cut in advance, requiring little effort to tear down, while the gates curiously remained intact.
Later, about a week after the unrest, an opposition-leaning Formula TV cited sources close to the organizers as believing the “double agent” was Grigol Liluashvili, the former State Security Service chief who left his post in April. According to cited sources, Liluashvili allegedly misled rally organizers into believing that elements within the security apparatus were ready to defect, but cut off communication with them at the last minute on October 4, either because he had been working for Georgian security services all along or because he was caught by them.
…or Misjudgment?
Other opposition figures and commentators who had distanced themselves from revolutionary discourse related to the October 4 rally from the beginning chose to see the election-day tensions as a product of either an ill-conceived plan or a reckless political gamble of the organizers.
Lelo-led Strong Georgia coalition, which chose to take part in the municipal vote, criticized the rally on October 4, calling it a “political gamble that struck a heavy blow to the peaceful protest.”
Some of those who boycotted the vote, too, saw the events as the result of a reckless venture or a miscalculation by the organizers.
“There is no case of overthrow[ing the government], or a coup d’état!” said Tamar Chergoleishvili, leader of the opposition Federalists party. “What exists in reality is a scam orchestrated by extremely irresponsible and unscrupulous people,” she added. “They’re so stupid that they don’t even realize it would be better to admit the whole truth and say that everything was smoke and lies!”
“One should believe that those people wanted something and simply made a mistake – either they were naïve or had a different understanding of reality,” writer Lasha Bughadze said in a Facebook post on October 12.
GD: It Was a Foreign-Orchestrated Coup Attempt
Officials from the ruling Georgian Dream party have claimed that the election-day unrest on October 4 was a foreign-orchestrated coup attempt.
“The October 4 coup in Tbilisi was masterminded, funded, and engineered from abroad,” wrote Shalva Papuashvili, speaker of the Georgian Dream Parliament, on X. “It was carried out by the local radicals, giving their masterminds an opportunity for plausible deniability – so that they avoid responsibility by ensuring there’s no definitive evidence of their involvement in the action, thus enabling them to deny any connection.”
Georgian Dream’s PM Irakli Kobakhidze also accused the West, including the EU, of failing to condemn the election-day unrest, saying that by not doing so, they “indirectly yet clearly” backed “overthrow and violence.”
In parallel, Georgian Security Services have pointed to a wider plot of armed uprising by claiming they discovered a large cache of weapons and ammunition intended for use on October 4, noting the plot was thwarted. The agency said the weapons were linked to a “military unit active in Ukraine.” The report followed earlier, pre-election claims by authorities in September that they seized explosive substances from two Ukrainian citizens, linking it with the municipal vote.
Authorities also questioned ex-UNM Minister Bacho Akhalaia and his spouse Ani Nadareishvili in connection with the unrest, including over an alleged recording aired by pro-government media where Akhalaia and Burchuladze purportedly discuss violent plans for October 4. Akhalaia called the recording “fake,” while Georgian fact-checkers pointed out that the file might have been generated by Artificial Intelligence.
Bitter Aftermath
The unrest was followed by a continuing wave of arrests related to what authorities have treated as a coup attempt. As of October 19, more than 60 people had been detained, including five rally organizers. Courts placed 58 in pre-trial custody, while three were released on bail, and three others were charged in absentia. While the organizers face coup-related charges carrying sentences of up to nine years, most other detainees are charged with participating in group violence and/or attempting to seize a strategic facility.
Georgian Dream officials have repeatedly referred to the ongoing peaceful protests at the parliament as a “continuation” of the October 4 events and have pledged to take “methodical and systematic” measures to end the daily gatherings.
In the weeks that followed, the ruling party fast-tracked amendments that toughened protest-related laws, replacing heavy fines with administrative detention for acts such as blocking roads or covering faces during rallies. Repeat offenders face up to one year in prison, while further violations can result in sentences of up to two years. Police began enforcing the new laws following the October 18 rally, detaining activists, with courts already sending several protesters to days in detention.
A parallel legislative package was adopted in the one-party parliament, extending the proposed constitutional ban on opposition parties to individuals “associated” with them. Georgian Dream leaders have made clear their intention to appeal to the Constitutional Court to outlaw all major opposition forces, while seeking to strip members and others linked to opposition groups of their rights to run in elections, form or join political parties, or hold public office.
The ruling party plans to apply to the Court in the coming days.
Nini Gabritchidze; Gigi Kobakhidze