Georgia’s Irakli Kobakhidze has vowed to prevent attempts to topple his government through street protests
Anti-government protests in Georgia are being financed by foreign intelligence services seeking to stage a coup similar to Ukraine’s 2014 uprising, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze claimed on Monday.
Tbilisi has faced pressure from Western governments and domestic demonstrations over its perceived drift from the post-Soviet republic’s European Union integration path. At a press conference, Kobakhidze compared the situation to the Euromaidan protests in Kiev as he criticized opposition parties.
“Foreign agents won’t stage a revolution in Georgia, we won’t allow that,” the prime minister said.
“All this is financed by foreign special services, as with the Maidan. Recall how the Maidan protests were financed and how it ended for Ukraine. Ukrainian statehood has collapsed. Ukraine endured two wars after that revolution financed by foreign special services,” he added.
The 2014 events in Kiev were marked by shooting attacks against police and protesters believed to be conducted by radical elements of the opposition and ultimately led to the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government. The new authorities, who adopted an anti-Russian stance, used military force in an attempt to suppress an ethnic Russian revolt in the east.
Years of failed reconciliation – later acknowledged by Kiev and its Western backers as a tactic to buy time and build up Ukraine’s military – led to the full-scale hostilities with Russia in 2022.
Kobakhidze’s government has accused Western nations of trying to draw Georgia into the Ukraine conflict. Officials in Tbilisi say the country is being targeted for refusing to open a “second front” against Moscow or fully align with Western policy.
The prime minister dismissed Georgia’s “radical opposition” as “essentially one power” with a single funding source and only minor tactical differences among its factions.
