Georgia’s ruling party Georgian Dream (GD) has released a statement denouncing recent “anti-Georgian resolutions” by certain Western countries, which the ruling party claim are members of “deep state” networks acting on the instruction of a so-called “Global War Party” (GWP).

The statement comes at a time of profound political polarisation in the Caucasus country. GD is accused by anti-government protesters in Tbilisi of stealing power in the latest elections and orchestrating the country’s authoritarian tilt away from Europe and towards Moscow. 

The GD Political Council’s extensive January 8 statement doubles down on old GD conspiracy theories whilst also throwing up some alarming new ones.

In the document, the GD Political Council lays down some of the wildest anti-Western propaganda and accusations ever before seen from a party that started out twelve years ago as firmly pro Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration, but has now done a complete about turn and can’t criticise the West enough. 

Meanwhile, pro-EU demonstrators continue to march in Tbilisi daily demanding new elections and the exit of a contested government they say has stolen their country’s EU future, calling on Georgia’s Western partners to increase the pressure on GD officials.

“Global War Party”

For several years GD has accused a “Global War Party” of seeking to provoke conflicts around the world, including in Georgia, by opening a “second front” of the Ukraine war in the Black Sea nation and dragging it into war with Russia.

In its pre-election campaign in the autumn of 2024, GD pledged to maintain “peace” in Georgia if elected, while insisting that victory for the pro-EU opposition, which GD claims is an agent of the West, could mean only “war”.

“‘Either you fight, or I will punish you’ – this is the simple message that Georgia and Georgians receive from the GWP,” the ruling party declared in its January 8 statement, reiterating its suspicion of the West’s intentions in the country of 3.8mn people.

Yet according to the Political Council, the Georgian people are “uncompromising”, and would “not allow the collective national movement [a GD term for the pro-western opposition], or the agency of the GWP to return to power and draw Georgia into war again”. 

“The Global War Party is only able to manipulate the opinion of a minority of the public,” the statement read, signalling GD believes the bulk of the Georgian people to be on its side, while a small proportion back the collective movement and “oppose the national interests of their country”.

“Deep state”

The GD Political Council declared so-called “deep state” networks to be “the main instrument of informal influence” of the “Global War Party” in Western countries. The statement, whilst devoid of a concrete definition of “deep 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 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 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.

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 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 parliamentary elections and intensified after the u-turn on EU accession announced on November 28.

The Political Council underscored the hypocrisy of the “GWP” and “deep state” in their recent sanctioning of Gomelauri but not of Vano Merabishvili, interior minister under Saakashvili, or Giorgi Gakharia, who held the position under GD in 2019, both of whom the ruling party claim were responsible for police violence against protesters.

“No one can force the Georgian government to sacrifice the country for a devastating war at the cost of any sanctions”, the Political Council concluded, adding that the Georgian people “will not allow Ukrainisation of Georgia at the cost of sanctions” and, therefore “‘deep state’ sanctions have lost all power in Georgia”.

“Ukrainisation”

GD seems convinced that the so-called GWP, along with “deep state networks” that it says hold influence over certain Western states, will stop at nothing to bring war to Georgia. 

In its statement, GD reiterates its warning against Georgia’s potential “Ukrainisation” and claims that “as long as the first front exists in Ukraine, there will always be interest in opening a second front in Georgia”.  

The Political Council asserted that, over the past four years, “deep state” had “swept a number of states around the world into the whirlwind of war”, had “destroyed America” and created “severe economic problems” for the EU, yet GD named Ukraine as reflecting “the most severe effects of ‘deep state’ patrons”.

“Ukraine, which until 2014 had sovereignty, territorial integrity, peace and almost $200bn economy, is practically destroyed, for which the authors of ‘Maidan’ do not take any responsibility,” GD stated, before adding that Georgia has survived the “Ukrainian scenario”. This assertion, coupled with the earlier claim that Georgia’s interior ministry “effectively prevented” a coup attempt, signals that the ruling party views the threat of pro-EU protests, which entered their 43rd day on January 9, to have passed.

Although it appears confident that its grip on power is strong, GD warns that “the struggle for peace continues” and Georgians must “fight to the end to survive and prevent the ‘Ukrainisation’ of Georgia”. Bizarrely, GD views its battle to withstand “GWP” attempts to stir up conflict on Georgia’s territory as doing “a good job for Europe”, while most European countries “are playing ‘deep state' and are unable to protect their national interests”.

Georgia’s EU membership

According to GD’s recent statement, the spread of “deep state” networks within Europe is behind “the existing anti-Georgian policy of the EU bureaucracy”, the value system of which it describes to be in a “dire condition”, citing “LGBT propaganda” which “directly threatens our country”.

In the statement, GD reiterates that Georgia’s accession to the EU could only be considered once the European bloc has “fully overcome the problem of informal oligarchic influence and ‘deep state’”, which the party hopes will happen by 2030, after which it will then pursue membership.

The GD Political Council also doubled down on the party’s key parliamentary elections campaign message: “with peace, dignity and prosperity to Europe”, values the party publicly claimed on November 28 have been compromised under the current EU leadership, leading it to suspend accession negotiations with the bloc, triggering the ongoing protests across Georgia.

US relations re-set

GD’s statement presented US president-elect Donald Trump as something like Georgia’s saving grace in all this, highlighting ‘promising statements' from his team about “the destruction of ‘deep state' in American official structures”.

This is not the first time Georgia’s ruling party has hinted that it is banking on significant changes once Trump comes back to office in a couple of weeks, namely a shift in Europe’s policy towards the current government in Tbilisi, but also the restoration of Georgia-US ties which, according to the statement, “President Trump's successful disruption of ‘deep state’ can ensure”. 

GD did not forget Joe Wilson, chair of the Helsinki Commission and a US representative, who has emerged recently as one of GD’s most outspoken critics in the international political community. “Joe Wilson is one of the most severe manifestations of ‘deep state’,” the statement declares, “a degraded politician with zero political culture who blatantly threatens to punish us if we don’t fight”.

The ruling party alleged that in recently reintroducing into Congress the “MEGOBARI (Friendship) Act, which sanctions those guilty of corruption or undermining Georgia’s sovereignty, Wilson was “fulfilling the political tasks of ‘deep state’”. The statement claimed the bill, dubbed the “Enemy Act”, was backed by former Georgian defence minister, Davit Kezerashvili, “a fraudster who has robbed many European pensioners”, and used the misappropriated money to fund Wilson’s initiatives and “blackmail Georgia with sanctions”. 

On January 9, the day after the GD Political Council released its statement, Wilson formed the Friends of Georgia group along with 42 other politicians, their task being to urge all “free and democratic governments” around the world “not to recognise the illegitimate regime of Bidzina Ivanishvili and to demand free and fair elections in Georgia”. The same day, a bipartisan bill co-authored by Wilson and titled the Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act was introduced in the US Congress, prohibiting US officials from recognising the GD government.

“Orwellian principle”

In a style of rhetoric reminiscent of Putin, the statement as a whole paints GD as leading Georgia’s courageous crusade against a Western neo-liberal world intent on bringing war and destruction to Georgia.

“Under the influence of the ‘GWP’, the Orwellian principle operates in the Modern World – ‘War is peace, slavery is freedom, and ignorance is power’,” the Political Council stated.

As an example, GD cited how the “GWP” refused to recognise the OSCE/ODIHR conclusion regarding the October 2024 parliamentary elections. The ruling party is seemingly alluding to how many in the European and US political sphere hold the belief that the autumn vote was not free or fair, a conclusion which the OSCE’s final observation report in fact draws.

Later in the day on January 8, cultural expert Zaal Andronikashvili described the political council’s statement as a manifestation of “delusional disorder and a conspiracy theory”, whilst also signalling GD’s “refusal to hold new elections and its intent to dismantle the state”.

Political analyst Paata Zakareishvili, meanwhile, stated that “GD has realised it’s been cornered; they didn’t expect such a sharp reaction [sanctions] from the West. Now they’re trying to withstand the blow and then go on the offensive.”

The director for the Centre for Social Justice, Tamta Mikeladze said that she believed GD’s propaganda should be taken more seriously. “Their primitive myths and conspiracy theories resonate with certain parts of society, and this requires not ridicule but proactive engagement,” she said.

With the current protest movement slowly losing steam and another four-year term for Georgian Dream increasingly becoming a reality, the statement gives insights into how the ruling party is seeking to firstly, retain its loyal supporters and, secondly, earn the trust of those Soviet-generation Georgians who may be on the fence, and for whom Europe does not provide all the answers to their problems.