The Conservatives for Georgia, a party founded by the pro-Russian, far-right group Alt Info, has announced that Zurab Makharadze, a leader of the group who is sanctioned by the US, will be its mayoral candidate.
The party published a video clip on social media on 10 August in which Makharadze announced his candidacy.
In the video, Makharadze said the party wants to focus on ‘real problems’ instead of the ‘so-called conflict’ between the ruling Georgian Dream party and the former ruling United National Movement (UNM), hinting at his group’s antipathy toward both.
Makharadze listed issues that ‘truly worry the people’, including ‘mass migration’ and a ‘catastrophic demographic situation’.
‘We want to establish that any municipal work or tender should be carried out only by Georgian citizens, encouraging the employment of locals’, he said.
In his words, the party seeks to ‘change the Georgian political reality’.
The Public Registry of Georgia registered a political party of the Alt Info in April, after flagging its founding documentation twice, citing technical reasons.
The new party was registered after the previous one was dissolved in 2024 amid growing tensions with Georgian Dream.
Municipal elections in Georgia will be held on 4 October 2025. Several major opposition parties have declared a boycott of the vote.
Alt Info and its political wing
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.
In November of the same year, the group founded a political party, Conservative Movement, for the first time.
‘If the Russian Federation truly wants an allied condition with Georgia, we are ready not only to start direct and unconditional dialogue but also to work on establishing a partnership-based and allied relation with Russia’, Makharadze said, adding that ‘the fate of Georgia’s territorial integrity is decided in the Kremlin’.
Subsequently, in 2023, Alt Info 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.
Mariam Nikuradze
Between two homophobic attacks, in 2022, Alt Info’s party leaders traveled to Russia to attend the Eurasian Economic Union forum, preceded by a joint conference with Russian MPs 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.
Growing tensions with the authorities
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, falling short of passing the 5% electoral threshold.
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 Georgian Dream was attempting to attract conservative voters to its side and distance its competitor.
In September 2024, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Alt Info’s co-founders, including Makharadze and Konstantine Morgoshia.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
