Daily protests continue against pro-Moscow gov’t in Georgia

By Vivian Sahner
January 27, 2025
Tens of thousands of protesters celebrate New Year’s Eve in Tbilisi, Georgia. They are demanding new national elections, defending Ukraine’s sovereignty against Moscow’s invasion.
Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto via APTens of thousands of protesters celebrate New Year’s Eve in Tbilisi, Georgia. They are demanding new national elections, defending Ukraine’s sovereignty against Moscow’s invasion.

Protesters demanding a new presidential election continue to take to the streets in Georgia. The actions began Nov. 28 after the pro-Moscow Georgian Dream party government announced plans to shelve talks on joining the European Union until at least 2028. Since then demonstrators have held daily marches in the capital, Tbilisi, and cities across the country.

While the government has pulled back from the large-scale police assaults carried out in the first weeks of the protests, cops continue to pick up demonstrators. In Batumi, Georgia’s second largest city, 10 protesters were arrested Jan. 11, including Mzia Amaglobeli, editor-in-chief of Batumelebi, an area news network, and of its nationwide online magazine, Netgazeti.

She was first arrested for putting up posters calling for a nationwide strike, then charged with assaulting a police officer, an act punishable by four to seven years in prison.

“There is no violence from the protesters,” Ruso, a 27-year-old demonstrator in Tbilisi, told the Militant by phone Jan. 13. “People are getting arrested for things like making too much noise.”

On Jan. 10, Tbilisi City Court Judge Ketevan Jachvadze denied bail for 11 people, including actor Andro Chichinadze and comedian Onise Tskhadadze. Both deny frame-up charges of participating in “group violence.” Protests against their detention continued outside the court during the trial.

Ruso said she was a student in 2023 when the government tried to introduce a law that would penalize people charged with being “foreign agents,” curtailing political rights and limiting freedom of the press. She joined the tens of thousands who protested. The government initially backed off, but then passed the bill in May 2024.

“There are many problems here that need to be addressed,” she said, pointing to monthslong protests last year by residents of the village of Shukruti in western Georgia, including workers at the manganese mine there. They’re fighting against bosses’ expansion of mining operations, leaving houses, vineyards and some farmland in ruins.

Moscow invaded Georgia in 2008, seizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “In December Moscow announced it won’t import tangerines from Abkhazia,” Ruso said. The measure, alongside the Russian government suspension of some funding for the region, was aimed at pressuring local authorities after they shelved a bill, favorable to Moscow, that would advance its efforts to Russify the population.

Many workers participate in the current actions in Tblisi, but so far few unions are involved, Ruso said. “Right now demonstrators call for a new election. It’s the one thing we can all agree on.”