Georgian Foreign Minister Botchorishvili claims Ukraine obstructed Tbilisi's EU accession

Georgian Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili has claimed that Ukraine worked to ‘prevent Georgia from receiving [EU] candidate status’. The comment came shortly after the European Commission released its 2025 enlargement report, in which Ukraine received positive marks while Georgia had the ‘worst enlargement report for any candidate country ever’, according to enlargement chief Marta Kos.

During a series of complaints about the report on Wednesday, Botchorishvili defended the ruling Georgian Dream party’s position on Ukraine. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war in 2022, Georgian Dream has been widely criticised in the West for not joining sanctions against Russia and continuing to maintain open communications with Moscow. Tbilisi’s position on Russia has contributed to a deterioration in relations with Kyiv.

‘It is shameful when anyone accuses Georgia of lying regarding Ukraine’, Botchorishvili said.

‘Since February 2022, Georgia has done everything to consistently express political support for Ukraine. This support from Georgia has always been present and continues’.

Pivoting to discuss Georgia’s abysmal 2025 enlargement report, Botchorishvili claimed that Ukraine had conspired to impede Georgia’s accession into the EU, echoing longstanding Georgian Dream conspiracy theories that Tbilisi has been punished for not opening a second front against Russia.

‘On Georgia’s path to EU integration and the process of obtaining candidate status, Ukraine at one point displayed a negative attitude, aiming to prevent Georgia from receiving candidate status’, Botchorishvili said.

‘We witnessed firsthand the campaigns that were held in 2022–2023 before we obtained candidate status, and Ukraine’s involvement in opposing Georgia’s European integration in various ways was evident’.

She concluded by saying that, ‘Today, Ukraine is not an EU member, and therefore it cannot have any say regarding Georgia’s EU integration process’.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha responded to Botchorishvili’s accusations the following day on X.

The Ukrainian government has set the end of 2028 as a target date for ending accession negotiations.

Georgia, on the other hand, opted in 2024 to suspend efforts to join the EU until 2028. The latest enlargement report found that Georgia, already in dire straits in the 2024 report, had devolved even further — to the point that it was explicitly called a ‘candidate country in name only’.

Aside from Botchorishvili, other Georgian Dream officials have dismissed the findings of the report, claiming to remain fully committed to joining the EU.

Zelenskyi says Europe has ‘lost Georgia’ at the UN, prompting pushback from Georgian Dream

In his speech at the UN General Assembly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi also said ‘Georgia is depend[ent] on Russia’.

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