🇬🇪Georgia and Georgian Dream is emerging as a key enabler of Russia’s sanctioned shadow fleet.
New reporting by Finland’s YLE reveals how Georgia-registered companies are keeping Russian oil tankers operational despite EU sanctions.
1/11 At the center is Arnika Trade LLC, a company registered in Tbilisi, identified as a key intermediary supplying spare parts for Finnish Wärtsilä engines used on Russian tankers under sanctions.
2/11

🇬🇪🇮🇷Georgia is strategically very important to the Iranian regime.
Not marginal. Not incidental.
Under Georgian Dream, Georgia has become a country Iran actively relies on to move money, goods, and political influence.
1/11 That importance did not emerge by accident. It grew as Georgian Dream steadily lowered political, diplomatic, and economic barriers between Tbilisi and Tehran, even as Iran faced deeper international isolation.
2/11

🇬🇪Georgia is no longer a democracy.
This is not “backsliding” or “under strain”.
It is an authoritarian system where power is, right now, being engineered to never change hands.
Calling it anything else is denial.
1/11
📷Maurizio Orlando / Hans Lucas Georgian Dream didn’t stumble into this.
They built it.
🔹Law by law
🔹Fine by fine
🔹Ban by ban
Repression that looks legal still counts as repression.
2/11
terjehelland1.substack.com/p/georgia-has-…

🇮🇷🇬🇪Over the past two years, Georgia’s ruling party Georgian Dream has quietly deepened ties with Iran. Not rhetorically. Practically. Through trade, business access, and political signaling that matters far more than speeches.
1/9 While Iran faces heavy international sanctions, Georgia has emerged as a low-friction gateway: company registrations, banking access, logistics, and regional transit. This is not accidental. It is policy enabled by political choice.
2/9

🇬🇪Nicolás Maduro was one of the first to recognize Georgia’s disputed October 2024 elections.
Let that sink in.
When Venezuela 🇻🇪endorses your election while democratic partners withhold recognition, it is highly revealing of the Georgian Dream @GeorgianDream41 regime.
1/10
Nicolás Maduro did not just “acknowledge” the result.
He praised Georgian Dream’s victory as “exemplary” and attacked the US for questioning it.
This was not diplomacy. It was ideological solidarity between authoritarian systems.
2/10

🇬🇪Peaceful protesters beaten, journalists assaulted, political prisoners jailed, opposition crushed, and WW1-era chemical agents used against civilians in the streets. This is not Europe🇪🇺. Georgia is not a democracy.
This is authoritarian rule in real time.
📷 Irakli Gedenidze Georgia is witnessing a full-scale power consolidation: repression normalized, courts captured, media weaponized, and violence used as a policy.
Georgian Dream is no longer drifting. It is deliberately choosing the Putin model.
And the West is merely watching.

🇬🇪BBC has confirmed that Georgian Dream used a WW1 chemical agent, Bromobenzyl cyanide, against peaceful protesters.
People suffered chemical burns, respiratory distress and long-term injuries.
@GeorgianDream41
📷 Tata Khundadze, David Nebieridze
? bbc.com/news/articles/… The last government documented to have used chemical agents against its own population was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That is the historical company Georgian Dream now keeps. This isn’t crowd control. It is state violence of the most alarming kind.

🇬🇪Over the past three years, Georgia has transformed from a fragile democracy into a Russian-aligned kleptocracy.
The ruling party, Georgian Dream (GD), isn’t just authoritarian-it’s financially desperate.
Everything it does now revolves around one thing: cash.
1/18 GD’s entire system depends on money flows once controlled by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made billions in Russia.
But since 2022, sanctions, asset freezes, and the loss of Western aid have cut the lifelines.
The regime is scrambling to fund itself-and its loyalty network.
2

🇬🇪Georgia’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) might sound like a graft-busting agency, but under Razhden Kuprashvili it has become a political weapon.
Georgian Dream is using it to wage a repressive crackdown on civil society, silencing NGOs and opposition voices.
1/13
In Sept. ´25, Kuprashvili’s bureau moved against 30 NGOs using a new “Law on Grants.” It sent letters demanding every detail of these NGOs’ activities and funding. This law - pushed through by Georgian Dream in April - bans foreign grants without Georgian Dream consent (governm).

🇺🇸🇬🇪 Oklahomans! In 2020, @SenMullin warned that Georgia’s ruling party was tied to Russia, Iran, and hostile actors.

Today, as a US Senator, he is blocking the bipartisan #MEGOBARIAct- thus protecting the very regime he once called a threat.

What happened?

1/7 The #MEGOBARIAct is simple: it holds Georgia’s ruling “Georgian Dream” accountable for democratic backsliding and Russian-style laws and human rights violations.

It passed the House.
It has the backing of 98 Senators.
Only two remain reluctant. Mullin is one of them.
2/7

🇬🇪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…