Giorgi Chighladze, a Georgian man arrested on July 19 after hitting a Russian-speaking tourist woman in her hotel room in Telavi, has been released from the courtroom on GEL 5,000 bail (approximately USD 1,900).
Telavi District Court judge Tamar Kapanadze granted prosecutors’ request for bail during the July 21 hearing.
Chighladze still faces prosecution under Article 120 of Georgia’s Criminal Code, which covers “intentional infliction of minor harm to health,” punishable by a fine, corrective labor for up to six months, house arrest for six months to two years, or imprisonment for up to three years.
“I regret this crime committed,” Chighladze was quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Georgian service as telling the court. “It was not my goal for this to end like this… this is what I want to say.”
He was arrested on Sunday, July 19, after hitting the woman – later identified as Alyona Nesteryuk – in her hotel room during a parallel wedding celebration at a hotel in Telavi, a city in Georgia’s eastern Kakheti region, the day before. According to the woman’s lawyer, the group of tourists the woman was part of included “Ukrainians – Russian citizens.”
The video uploaded by the woman’s friend (and currently no longer publicly accessible on Instagram) shows a verbal argument between the man and the woman, with the woman pushing the man outside her hotel room with her hands, after which the man punches the woman forcefully in the face, leading the woman to fall. The video later shows the woman surrounded by blood-stained towels as emergency services provide medical assistance.
Nesteryuk’s friends, who posted a video of the late-night July 18 incident online, said that Chighladze attacked her because she was speaking Russian. The defense lawyer and wedding guests, on the other hand, argued that she was part of the group that had provoked the conflict by insulting the wedding guests and pouring water at the musical equipment from their balcony, and was the first to initiate the physical confrontation. The lawyer also posted a picture of Chighladze, the groom’s brother, showing a bruised neck.
The Interior Ministry said that, “according to the witness testimonies,” members of the woman’s group had “offended” people attending the wedding from their hotel room balcony and spilled water on the sound equipment, after which Chighladze “inflicted physical injury” on the woman. According to the Ministry, the woman was transferred to a clinic for medical assistance.
The Agarani Estate Hotel, where the incident took place, issued a statement on July 20 detailing the developments that led to the physical confrontation. According to the hotel, the confrontation started shortly after 8 pm, with a verbal dispute between wedding guests, who were on the ground floor, and the woman’s group, who were on a second-floor balcony. The hotel said the verbal confrontation was preceded “by the fact of liquids being spilled on the musical equipment.”
According to the hotel, its staff repeatedly intervened and attempted to prevent the escalation, including by planning to relocate the foreign guests to another hotel room, and called the police. It noted that when one of the wedding guests, apparently Chighladze, went up to the upper floors by elevator, a hotel employee immediately followed him, but by the time the elevator returned and the employee reached the third floor, the physical confrontation had already taken place.
Various video recordings from the scene also show verbal exchanges between wedding guests and women on the balcony.
Speaking with members of the pro-Russian Georgian political party Solidarity for Peace, Alyona Nesteryuk said she and her friends did not “provoke” anyone “in any way,” denying claims that they had poured water or any other liquid on the wedding party. “Our group, our girls, did not use vulgar language, did not swear, and did not insult anyone,” she said in a video posted by the party’s leader, pro-Kremlin figure Mamuka Pipia, adding that “the other side started shouting and swearing first.”
Chighladze’s lawyer, Lasha Kapanadze, however, argued that his client was a “victim” of what he described as a “provocation staged by the Russians.”
The incident sparked wider debate over local concerns surrounding Russian tourism. While some commentators echoed concerns that have circulated since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, arguing that visitors from Russia could be instrumentalized to provoke similar incidents, others demanded that the women involved also be held accountable for their alleged role in disrupting the wedding.
A group of protesters marched in Tbilisi on the evening of July 20 to express support for Chighladze.
Some commentators warned, however, against any attempts to justify such violence by contextual circumstances, drawing parallels to similar attempts to explain cases of domestic and/or gender-based violence in Georgia.
Also Read:
