After long delays, Georgia registers far‑right, pro‑Russian Alt Info’s new political party

The Public Registry of Georgia has registered a political party of the pro‑Russian, far‑right group Alt Info Georgia. The decision, finalised on Wednesday, was announced by the group whose previous party was dissolved last year amid growing tensions with the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Alt Info submitted its application to register the new party on 27 February, but the Public Registry flagged the documentation twice — on 27 March and 8 April, citing technical reasons, and did not approve the application.

‘The protracted, absurdly drawn‑out bureaucratic battle has ended. Our party is officially registered’, one of the leaders of Alt Info, Zura Makharadze, wrote on Telegram, adding that the new party will be called Conservatives for Georgia.

Since its political wing was founded in 2021, Alt Info had the apparent support of the government, with the authorities declining to prosecute the group’s leaders for directing violent attacks against journalists and activists.

However, rumours of a rift between the government and Alt Info emerged in late 2023, culminating in the authorities de-registering the group’s Conservative Movement party based on a technicality  in April 2024 — barring them from running the October parliamentary elections.

Following that, Alt‑Info struck an agreement with another far‑right party called Georgian Idea to run on their list in the elections, but the registry later dissolved that party as well.

Consequently, Alt‑Info was forced to run on the list of the pro-Russian and ultra-conservative Alliance of Patriots party, which, according to the Central Election Commission, won 2.4% in the disputed October elections.

Alt‑Info gained notoriety for holding several violent anti-LGBT demonstrations in Tbilisi.

The group is best known for organising the July 2021 homophobic riots and mass attacks on the media, during which over 50 journalists were injured, one of whom died six days later. During the day-long violence, police took almost no action to prevent the attacks. The leaders of Alt Info, who publicly organised and directed the violence, did not face charges.

Subsequently, in 2023 they attacked the Tbilisi Pride festival site in a suburb of Tbilisi, burning and destroying the festival’s infrastructure and looting the beverages purchased for the event. The police stationed nearby watched the attack unfold and, once again, took virtually no action to stop the perpetrators.

Between two homophobic attacks, in 2022, Alt‑Info’s party leaders traveled to Russia to attend the Eurasian Union forum, preceded by a joint conference with Russian State Duma deputies on ‘Georgian‑Russian relations’.

Alt Info’s messages have closely aligned with the ruling party’s rhetoric when it came to assertions of destabilisation and the threat of war in Georgia.

In September 2023, Georgia’s State Security Service stated it was investigating an alleged coup plot involving Ukraine’s deputy counterintelligence director, Georgian volunteers in Ukraine, and a former bodyguard of ex‑President Mikheil Saakashvili. In response, the pro‑Russian group  announced the creation of an ‘Anti‑Maidan Movement’ to, as they put it, stop the West from organising a coup in Georgia.

The deterioration of relations with the ruling party and the banning of Alt Info’s party were accompanied by a rise in increasingly conservative‑populist, anti-Western and homophobic rhetoric from the Georgian Dream. Against this backdrop, Alt‑Info voiced complaints that the ruling party was attempting to attract conservative voters to its side and distance its competitor.

‘They [Georgian Dream] are gradually tightening the noose here to steer reality into authoritarianism to remain the only political force [in Georgia]’, Alt Info’s Makharadze wrote on Telegram in March of this year, when the group’s party documentation was flagged.

In September 2024, the US Treasury Department  sanctioned Alt Info’s co-founders, including Makharadze and Konstantine Morgoshia.

US sanctions four Georgian security officials and far-right extremists for ‘serious human rights abuses’

Washington has imposed financial sanctions against security officials and the leaders of Alt Info for undermining and suppressing the freedom of peaceful assembly in Georgia. They have additionally imposed travel sanctions on 60 others, including senior government officials. On Monday, the US Department of Treasury sanctioned the chief of the Interior Ministry’s Special Task Department, Zviad (Khareba) Kharazishvili, and his deputy Mileri Lagazauri. They also sanctioned the extremist far-ri

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