Lithuania has sanctioned 10 more Georgians, including judges and prosecutors involved in the cases of those detained during the ongoing anti-government protests, as well as several MPs from the ruling Georgian Dream party and the head of the government of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara.
Among those newly added to the sanctions list are judges Nino Galustashvili, Jvebe Nachkebia, Irakli Shvangiradze, and Viktor Metreveli. The first three are involved in cases against demonstrators detained under criminal charges, while Metreveli presided over the pre-trial hearing of Batumelebi and Netgazeti director Mzia Amaghlobeli.
Additionally, Shvangiradze was involved in cases against opposition leaders who were arrested for refusing to appear before a Georgian Dream-led parliamentary commission.
Prosecutors Mari Meshveliani and Natia Tatiashvili were also sanctioned. Both were involved in cases against jailed opposition leaders.
The list also included Razhden Kuprashvili, the head of Georgia’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, who is responsible for enforcing one of Georgian Dream’s latest restrictive laws — the foreign agents registration act (FARA).
Georgian Dream MPs Mariam Lashkhi and Nino Tsilosani were also sanctioned by Vilnius, as well as Sulkhan Tamazashvili, who has served as Chair of the Government of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara since April, and previously headed the Tbilisi Police Department.
Before the 10 new names were published, Lithuania had already sanctioned 102 other Georgians, whose identities were revealed in mid-April. The list included Georgian Dream MPs, individuals close to the party and its affiliates, judges, police officers, prosecutors, and the owner of the pro-government TV channel Imedi.
All those on the list of ‘undesirable persons’ are banned from entering Lithuania until either 2029 or 2030.
The Lithuanian sanctions have come alongside those of several other Western countries in response to democratic backsliding in Georgia. The process intensified particularly after Georgian Dream suspended Georgia’s bid for EU membership in November 2024 and violently cracked down on the ensuing protests, all of which followed highly controversial parliamentary elections in October, which were marked by major irregularities.
Georgian Dream’s rhetoric toward the sanctioning countries, especially the Baltic states, has been harsh. Previously, the ruling party questioned the sovereignty of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, claiming that their governments do not truly exist and that these countries are in fact controlled by a conspiratorial ‘global war party’ and the ‘deep state’.
In response to the latest sanctions, Georgian Parliamentary Speaker Shalva Papuashvili stated on Monday that the ‘political elites of the Baltics’, who, according to him, are ‘largely made up of families of the communist nomenklatura’, were driven by ‘spite’ toward Georgians.
OC Media
