Kobakhidze responds to US sanctions, claims nothing has changed

Responding to the announcement of US sanctions against Georgian Dream founder and honorary chair Bidzina Ivanishvili earlier this evening, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze claimed that ‘in reality, nothing has changed’.

‘You know that Mr. Bidzina Ivanishvili was under de facto sanctions before too and he was blackmailed for almost three years with formal sanctions. Now the grounds for this blackmail have also been removed. I don't know what will save the opposition now’, Kobakhidze told journalists while attending the Georgian Football Federation awards.

‘De facto sanctions were already in effect and these de facto sanctions, informal sanctions, were in effect because of one thing — this person [Ivanishvili] did not give up the national interest of this country. You know what the challenges of our country were in 2022, what they demanded from the [government], what they specifically demanded first of all from Mr. Bidzina Ivanishvili’, Kobakhidze claimed, adding that ‘precisely because he did not go against the fundamental interests, key interests of our country, that is why they first imposed de facto sanctions and now, in the end, they have made a decision [to impose formal ones] that has no substantive meaning’.

‘On the contrary, I will repeat once again that with this decision, they finally took away the instrument of blackmail. This is what the force that we call the Global War Party has been doing for three years now. I have great hope that everything will change in the other direction’, Kobakhidze continued.

He noted that he recently spoke with Ivanishvili and that ‘his position is exactly the same’.

‘For three years, because Bidzina Ivanishvili served the interests of this country, he was under de facto sanctions, now this formal sanction will be imposed. Nothing special. This is actually a reward for protecting the national interests of our country’, Kobakhidze emphasised.