Gakharia Party Links Georgian Dream's Silence to Russia's Tskhinvali Annexation Push
By Messenger Staff
Friday, May 15, 2026
The Gakharia For Georgia party said the Russian State Duma's ratification of the alliance treaty with the occupied Tskhinvali region marks an "active and extremely dangerous phase" of annexation, and accused the Georgian Dream government of criminal silence and inaction in the face of it.
The State Duma adopted the federal law ratifying the Agreement on the Deepening of Allied Cooperation between Russia and the de facto Republic of South Ossetia at its plenary session, following Putin's submission of the treaty for ratification. The party noted that the original agreement was signed on May 9, describing the date as "particularly symbolic and cynical."
In its statement, the party said Georgian Dream's recent conduct pointed to something more troubling than mere passivity. It cited the ruling party's public apology, its attempts to portray Georgia as the aggressor in the August 2008 war, and the prosecution of former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia over the Chorchana checkpoint case. The party stated, "for defending Georgian land, stopping the creeping occupation, and placing a standard police checkpoint in the village of Chorchana." The party said these actions mirror "the rhetoric of the Russian occupation regime in Tskhinvali and Russian propaganda narratives," and that taken together they "directly indicate that these processes are suspiciously criminally connected to the process of annexation of the Tskhinvali region by the Russian Federation."
The party also pointed to Georgian Dream's silence over the substance of discussions within the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism and the Geneva International Negotiations, as well as Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova's statement that Moscow was working confidentially to move the Geneva negotiations format to "neutral territory," calling the government's failure to respond to either development further evidence of its complicity through inaction.
The party called on Georgian Dream to "exit the regime of criminal silence and inaction," respond clearly to the annexation push, and mobilize international partners and relevant formats. "We call on the Dream government to respond clearly to the incident, including mobilizing international partners and relevant formats, in order to prevent the process of annexation of the occupied territory of Georgia, the Tskhinvali region," the statement read.
