Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has accused opposition figures and government critics of ignoring Russia’s 2008 war against Georgia and turning “Russophobic” only after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, claiming that their “Russophobia” is more “instructed” than genuine.
In a lengthy Facebook letter published on August 4, amid the 18th anniversary of the 2008 August war, Kobakhidze began by reiterating the ruling party’s longstanding accusation that the former United National Movement (UNM) government started the war. He went on to outline the war’s consequences, including Russia’s occupation of 20% of Georgia’s territory, the displacement of tens of thousands of people, and the deaths and injuries of hundreds more.
“Against the backdrop of a tragedy of this scale, the August War did not become sufficient grounds for the United National Movement regime and its followers between 2008 and 2012 to develop radical attitudes towards Russia,” Kobakhidze said. “In fact, the opposite happened,” he added, claiming that following the war and Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali/South Ossetia as “independent states,” the UNM government instead pursued closer ties with Russia.
Kobakhidze said then-president Mikheil Saakashvili “personally welcomed” Russians at the border and “invited them” to Georgia for tourism and business, while the UNM government sought to deepen “cultural and humanitarian ties” with Russia, encouraged the involvement of Russian capital in Georgia’s economy, including strategic sectors, and later unilaterally abolished the visa regime for Russian citizens.
“Neither representatives of the UNM regime nor their followers expressed any protest against his policy at the time,” Kobakhidze said, claiming that figures such as opposition politicians Elene Khoshtaria and Zurab Japaridze, and Formula TV director Misha Mshvildadze, whom he dubbed “today’s core Russophones”, had then “welcomed Russian tourists, Russian money that ‘had no smell’ back then, and the deepening of trade-economic and cultural ties” with Moscow.
“These political forces, NGOs associated with them and other active followers, who have been formed into an externally controlled ‘agentura’ [a Russian term referring to a spy network] – a unified radical force – and have repeatedly proved that they are engaged only in pursuing the interests of external forces in Georgia, were not busy with anti-Russian aggression in 2008-2012 […] but developed radical anti-Russian sentiment only after Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time,” Kobakhidze said.
“It is clear that the Global War Party needed the scale of the conflict currently underway to involve Europe in the war and to fuel Russophobia within the agentura to the highest level worldwide, including in Georgia,” he added, invoking GD’s longstanding conspiracy theory according to which informal oligarchic forces, which it calls the “Global War Party” and the “deep state,” control most Western states and their governments.
“It is a paradox, but it is a fact that, in their understanding, Russia became a true occupier not after occupying Georgia, but after occupying Ukrainian territories,” Kobakhidze said, accusing his opponents of “caring more about Ukraine than Georgia because they have received such instructions [from abroad].”Kobakhidze then claimed that their “Russophobia” is “fake” and politically motivated rather than genuine.
“We all know that, both in the past and today, the agentura in Georgia acts in accordance with instructions from external forces, and that their homeland is not Georgia but the ‘deep state,’” Kobakhidze said.
“Against this backdrop, it is interesting why they were not instructed to be Russophobic when there was the strongest reason for it, namely after the August 2008 war, and why they were instructed to be Russophobic now, when the victim of Russian aggression is not their formal homeland but another, even if friendly, country,” he added, concluding that Georgian public would “easily find a logical explanation for this illogicality.”
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