Kobakhidze: Pressure on Georgia Since 2022 Forced Us to Take Decisive Steps to Strengthen Sovereignty

Growing pressure on Georgia and its sovereignty since 2022 forced the government to take decisive steps that ultimately strengthened the country’s state sovereignty, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said during an appearance on Open Air, a programme aired by Georgia’s Imedi TV.

“After 2022, we found ourselves under pressure to act, and in principle, that pressure also produced a positive result. We managed to achieve something we had been unable to accomplish before 2022 we qualitatively strengthened our state sovereignty,” Kobakhidze said.

According to the prime minister, defending Georgia’s sovereignty in the way the government does today would have been considerably more difficult at earlier stages, including as recently as six or seven years ago.

“As for sovereignty, at certain stages in our history, defending it in the way we have managed to do today was much more difficult not only 15 years ago, but even six or seven years ago. We simply could not do it,” he said.

Kobakhidze claimed that even senior government officials had previously been appointed as a result of external interference, with the authorities accepting such circumstances in order to avoid jeopardising what they regarded as broader national interests.

“However, in 2022, when pressure on the country and its sovereignty intensified, we were effectively forced to act. What happened was, in a sense, also the result of that pressure. We had to take decisive steps to strengthen our sovereignty,” he said.

The prime minister also referred to what he described as “external forces”, saying it had been extremely difficult before 2022 to publicly criticise certain actors.

Kobakhidze extended that criticism to non-governmental organisations, describing NGOs as “an absolutely paradoxical phenomenon in a democratic system” and claiming they were “artificially created” solely as instruments of foreign intervention.

“You could not say anything critical about NGOs. I remember once making a specific comment about NGOs after they supported what was genuinely a fascist statement Gvaramia’s well-known statement and it triggered such a hysterical reaction, both from abroad and domestically, that I do not even know how to describe it,” Kobakhidze said.

“After 2022, we were forced to act, and ultimately that pressure also produced a positive result. We achieved what we had been unable to achieve before 2022 we qualitatively strengthened our state sovereignty,” he added.