🇬🇪Georgia’s paradox: a government despised by its people, yet firmly in power.
Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream survives not through popularity, but by fusing repression, economic dependency, and rigged institutions.
🧵In this thread I try to explain this paradox.

1/16 Polls are clear: Georgians distrust the government, dislike Ivanishvili, and want a European future🇪🇺.
And yet, since 2012, Georgian Dream has ruled without interruption.
Why?
Because the state has been rewired into a machine of loyalty and fear.

2/16

🇬🇪Georgia is suffocating under Putin’s Trojan Horse @GeorgianDream41.

Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream has turned a pro-European nation into a captured state.

The West is still looking away. It’s time to act - and sanctions are the key.
1/16 Ask Georgians: Ivanishvili is despised.

His “foreign agents” law, copied from Moscow, is rejected by the majority. His anti-Western rants fall flat.

So why does Georgian Dream still control the country?
2/16

🇬🇪Why is Georgian Dream surviving despite mass protests, backlash, and international condemnation?

The answer isn’t repression alone. It’s money.

🧵A thread on how Bidzina Ivanishvili’s fortune and Russian inflows saved his regime - and why it’s still may crack.
1/15 This thread draws on an excellent analysis by Jaba Devdariani @JDevdariani & Tornike Zurabashvili @TornikeZ :
“How Money Saved Ivanishvili’s Regime”.

Highly recommended reading ⬇️
2/15
politicsgeo.com/article/168

🇬🇪Georgia is undergoing a political transformation - but not towards the future we all want.
The extremist ruling party, Georgian Dream, has evolved into a demagogic, anti-Western machine, deploying propaganda and laws that echo the darkest chapters of the 20th century.
1/17 This is not an exaggeration. Georgian Dream’s tactics combine authoritarian governance, Russia-aligned revisionism, and Goebbels-style propaganda.
There has been a near-total one party state takeover and the systematic dismantling of democracy.
2/17
politicsgeo.com/article/167

🇬🇪A country once seen as the democratic bright spot of the post-Soviet space is now undergoing the fastest authoritarian regression in modern European history.
🧵Here’s a thread to keep you updated on what’s happening - and why it matters.
1/23 🇪🇺Just 18 months ago, Georgia was granted EU candidate status.
Today:
🔹 Rigged elections
🔹 Political prisoners
🔹 Criminalized dissent
🔹 Legislation 100% incompatible with EU membership
🔹 Suspended EU integration
The speed of collapse is staggering - and intentional.
2/23

🇧🇬🇺🇦In March 2025, a voice on the phone said: “We will bring you to your knees, swine.” Weeks later, his family was chased on a Bulgarian highway.
🧵This isn’t fiction. It’s the true story of Svet DiNahum - a writer punished for exposing Russian lies.

1/24 For seven years, Svet DiNahum @sdnahum
has endured state-linked persecution in Bulgaria. His “offenses”?
🔹Writing a novel critical of Russia’s annexation of Crimea
🔹Supporting Ukraine
🔹Publishing peer-reviewed research on Russian disinformation

2/24

🇧🇬🇺🇦In March 2025, a voice on the phone said: “We will bring you to your knees, swine.”
Weeks later, his family was chased on a Bulgarian highway.
🧵This isn’t fiction. It’s the true story of Svet DiNahum - a writer punished for exposing Russian lies.

1/24 For seven years, Svet DiNahum @sdnahum has endured state-linked persecution in Bulgaria.
His “offenses”?
🔹Writing a novel critical of Russia’s annexation of Crimea
🔹Supporting Ukraine
🔹Publishing peer-reviewed research on Russian disinformation

2/24

🇬🇪SANCTION BILL: The U.S. Congress has just passed a historic bill that strikes at the heart of Georgian Dream’s regime.
It labels GD as pro-Kremlin, mandates sanctions, freezes aid, and declares the government unfit to lead a Western-aligned Georgia.
🧵This changes everything.
1/8 For the first time, Georgian Dream is officially designated by a major Western power as a pro-Russian force working against Georgia’s democratic and Euro-Atlantic future.
Their façade of “pro-European stability” has collapsed — in full view of the world.
2/8

🇬🇪As the U.S. ramps up sanctions against Iran, Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, is quietly strengthening ties with Iran, Russia, and China, potentially positioning Georgia as a backdoor conduit for sanctioned regimes.
An Iran–Georgia sanctions evasion thread ...
1/9 Since 2023, trade between Georgia and Iran has surged significantly. Georgian imports from Iran jumped from $167 million in 2022 to approximately $285 million by 2024, including petrochemicals, metals, and construction materials—all crucial sectors targeted by U.S. sanctions.
2/9

🇬🇪 April 9, 1989: Soviet paratroopers crushed a peaceful pro-independence rally in Tbilisi.
21 Georgians were killed.
The commander on the ground?
Alexander Lebed, a rising Soviet general.
Years later, he would be funded by Bidzina Ivanishvili—Georgia’s future PM.
A thread 🧵 April 9 became sacred in Georgia—etched in the national soul as the day the fight for freedom turned deadly.
But in 2025, Georgian Dream’s leader, Kobakhidze, said this:
“36 years later, still a foreign force is engaged in violence on Rustaveli Avenue.”
He meant the protesters.

🇬🇪Exit polls confirmed Georgia’s opposition—Coalition for Change, UNM, Strong Georgia, and For Georgia—won decisively in the Oct '24 elections
Yet overnight, the Central Election Commission declared Georgian Dream (GD) victorious with 53%. Observers denounce this as blatant fraud Western democracies rightly refuse to recognize GD’s illegitimate government. The extreme GD don't care. They are doubling down—introducing a law to BAN these opposition parties, labeling them anti-Georgian, anti-constitutional, anti-national, and criminal
globalnews.ge/en/georgia/123…

🇬🇪 The self-proclaimed speaker of the one-party parliament of Georgia, Shalva Papuashvili’s presence at the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Uzbekistan is not diplomacy — it’s whitewashing.
He represents a regime that stole an election and rules through coercion, not consent.
1/6 The Oct. 2024 election was widely condemned for intimidation, media bias, vote manipulation, and systemic abuse of state power.
All major observer groups — both international and domestic — were aligned in their findings.
2/6

🇬🇪GEORGIA WARNING: What’s happening is no longer a temporary backslide. It’s a coordinated campaign to dismantle democracy, capture institutions, and reorient Georgia’s geopolitical future.
🧵And Europeans politely ask them to “return to the European path" ...
1/22 Georgian Dream (GD) has been repeatedly told — by the EU itself — that laws adopted already in 2024 are fundamentally incompatible with EU membership. These laws must be repealed to even begin serious accession talks. GD knows this.
2/22

🇬🇪Georgia is quietly undergoing a dramatic geopolitical shift. Under Georgian Dream and its informal leader Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country is accelerating its alignment with Iran (and China and Russia)—abandoning its Western orientation.
🧵A thread on why this matters.
1/16 In 2023 and 2024, high-level diplomatic contacts between Tbilisi and Tehran reached unprecedented levels.
Georgian PM Irakli Kobakhidze made two visits to Iran in 2024 alone—an extraordinary development that signals a warming political partnership.
2/16

🇬🇪We know Georgian Dream is steering Georgia toward Russia. But there’s another shift unfolding—one that gets far less attention.
🧵This thread explains how GD is deepening its ties with China, aligning Georgia with a growing authoritarian bloc and turning away from the West
1/21 Georgian Dream (GD) claims it is committed to Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic path. It repeats promises of better EU and US relations. Yet the government’s policies are moving Georgia in the opposite direction—away from the democratic West, and into authoritarian partnerships.
2/21

🇬🇪🇬🇧Irakli Rukhadze, owner of Imedi TV and Hunnewell Partners, has lost his case at the UK Supreme Court. He’s been ordered to pay over $170 million in damages plus interest. The ruling confirms he led a “commercial conspiracy” to seize assets from Badri Patarkatsishvili’s.
1/5 Why does this matter? Rukhadze controls Hunnewell Partners and Imedi TV—two major players in Georgia’s financial and media sectors. This ruling exposes a pattern of disloyalty and misconduct with potential repercussions far beyond the courtroom.
2/5

🇬🇪With global attention fixed on Ukraine, the EU, and the new US admin, Georgia is quietly sliding into dictatorship. Georgian Dream (GD), under oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, is dismantling democracy at alarming speed—largely unnoticed by the West
🧵A new dictatorship thread
1/24 GD’s one-party parliament has passed sweeping new laws designed explicitly to suppress independent media, civil society, and ordinary citizens.
Peaceful dissent now risks criminal punishment.
Georgia is no longer a democracy in crisis—it’s becoming a dictatorship.
2/24

🇺🇸🇪🇺🌎The transatlantic alliance faces an uncomfortable truth: the instability in U.S. politics isn't just about Trump. It’s about the deeper flaws in American democracy itself—flaws that make the U.S. an unreliable pillar of Western security.
🧵A security thread.
1/10 Trump—a convicted fraudster, rapist, and insurrectionist—isn’t an outlier. The fact that he can win power again is a symptom of systemic weakness.
In any functioning democracy, such a figure would be politically extinct.
In the U.S., he was the GOPs first choice.
2/10

🇬🇪BREAKING! The BBC @BBC is funding authoritarian propaganda in Georgia.
Its commercial arm, BBC Studios, licenses Dancing with the Stars to Imedi TV, a Georgian Dream-controlled channel that openly admits its mission is to keep the opposition out of power.
🧵A dance dive:
1/11 Imedi TV is not an independent broadcaster. It is a Russian-style propaganda machine for Georgia’s extreme ruling party. Its owner, Irakli Rukhadze, is a UK-based mini-oligarch and a close ally of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Kremlin-linked billionaire who controls Georgia.
2/11

🇺🇦🇺🇸Trump’s lies and despicable statements about Ukraine aren’t just embarrassing—they’re isolating him and the U.S. on the world stage.
While he pushes Kremlin propaganda, Europe is moving on without Washington.
The U.S. is now weaker and more irrelevant than ever.
A thread 🧵: For the first time in modern history, Europe no longer trusts the U.S. as a reliable partner.
When Trump gutted NATO in his first term, it was seen as reckless. Now? Allies are actively preparing for a world where Washington doesn’t matter.

🇬🇪Munich ’25 was a wake-up call. The US is no longer a reliable partner for Europe.
Hegseth betrayed Ukraine🇺🇦, suggesting it should cede land and drop NATO
VP Vance declared that Russia isn’t Europe’s main threat.
🧵Europe must act. And Georgia is the battlefield where we start For too long, Europe has reacted to crises instead of controlling them.
Now, with US disengagement, Europe must take the offensive—economically, politically, and strategically. We must shape the future.
The fastest, most effective move?
A decisive European-led victory in Georgia