The three MPs who had no controversies with the ruling party but left the Georgian Dream on June 28 to tell the public “the truth” said on Wednesday that the Georgian Dream authorities were “trapped” by the EU candidate status and that the country was unlikely to receive the status if it refused to “either open the second front for Russia, or impose sanctions on Russia.” 

In a letter released on June 29, Sozar Subari, Dimitri Khundadze and Mikheil Kavelashvili suggested that pushing the issue of the EU candidate status was a “trap” for the Georgian Dream government, hiding a revolutionary scenario. 

“Obviously, EU membership is completely irrelevant to Ukraine today. Due to Russian military aggression, the country is on fire, it  is being destroyed, hundreds of people die every day, and the candidate status for this country is no relief. The same goes for Moldova, which borders the conflict zone, shelters hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees and is facing dire economic problems. 

“The only purpose of the candidate status was to artificially strain the situation in Georgia and make grounds for a revolution,” said the MPs. They suggested that “when 300 MEPs sign an absurd resolution [referring to the resolution earlier this month which called for sanctions of the GD founder Bidzina Ivanishvili], the overall picture and purpose is clear. No one will grant Georgian a candidate status even after six months if Georgia will not get involved in the war or impose sanctions on Russia.” The MPs claimed that initially the country’s President Salome Zourabichvili “was used” to “trap the authorities” by the candidate status, and that the “unprecedentedly short, six-month period was set for Georgia to address the priorities for the candidate status to maintain the revolutionary mood.”  The MPs said yesterday that they needed to leave the GD, where they had faced no complications in views, to openly tell the public the truth, as the “responsibility of being members of the ruling party deprived them of freedom of speech.” 

The opposition said that the MPs would voice the founder of the GD, “oligarch” Ivanishvili in parliament and would make “radical, anti-Western statements, and benefit Russian interests.”