Kobakhidze hints at many arrests and blames ‘foreign intelligence’ for protests

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has given a press conference in which he said they expected to ‘have to’ arrest far more than 30 people in connection with the protests.

He said the government now had ‘more resources’ to identify offenders.

He said 15 police officers and six protesters had to be hospitalised. These numbers showed how ‘large-scale’ the violence was, he said.

Some condemned the attempt to overthrow the government only after the attempt failed, he said, ‘including Salome Zourabichvili’.

He continued by saying today’s protest, as well the daily protests for more than 300 days since Georgian Dream’s EU U-turn in 2024, were organised by foreign intelligence agencies.

‘Georgia is not the country where foreign intelligence agencies are given an opportunity to overthrow the government’.

He reiterated his earlier statement about expecting ‘ambassadors, diplomats, bureaucrats’ to condemn tonight’s events.