The United States has imposed sanctions and visa restrictions on Georgian officials and pro-Russia far-right political activists, including Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder and honorary chairman of Georgia's ruling party, Georgian Dream.Footnote ¹ The penalties, first issued in September 2024 and expanded in December, followed the government's enactment of a law requiring the registration of foreign-funded organizations, its violent suppression of those protesting the law's passage, and its crackdown on political opponents following parliamentary elections in October. The unrest stems from fundamental differences between the governing party, which has increasingly sought closer relations with Russia, and the opposition, which has favored deeper ties with the West, including membership in the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Since its electoral victory, which was marred by irregularities, the government has passed new laws further expanding its power to stifle opposition and stripping opposition members of parliament of their credentials.

In May 2024, the Georgian parliament adopted, over a presidential veto, a law “On Transparency of Foreign Influence.”Footnote ² The law requires organizations (non-profits, broadcasters, and print and digital media) that receive more than twenty percent of their non-commercial income from a “foreign power” (foreign governments, organizations, and natural and legal persons) to register as “an organisation pursuing the interests of a foreign power” and submit an annual financial declaration.Footnote ³ Registrations and financial declarations will be made public, and failure to register will result in fines.Footnote ⁴ The law is similar to a 2012 Russian law, a version of which was subsequently adopted in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and a Hungarian one that the Court of Justice of the European Union found was contrary to Hungary's obligations as an EU member state, including those pertaining to freedom of association under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.Footnote ⁵ The Georgian law “presupposes,” the Council of Europe's Venice Commission noted, “that anyone receiving foreign support will act in pursuit of the interests of the foreign funder,” and, thus, it seeks to “[s]tifl[e] dissent,” “stigmatiz[e]” civil society organizations and independent media, and “undermine[] their public trust and access to financial resources.”Footnote ⁶ More than ninety percent of the funding for Georgia's civil society organizations comes from international donors, especially in the West.Footnote ⁷ The government views foreign-funded organizations, including those receiving money from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), as sowing “disturbance and destabilisation.”Footnote ⁸ A draft foreign influence law had previously been introduced in early 2023, but it was withdrawn following public protests and threats from EU officials that passage would endanger the granting of EU candidate status to Georgia.Footnote ⁹ That status was bestowed in December 2023.Footnote ¹⁰ Within five months, though, the foreign influence law was reintroduced and approved.

Prior to the law's enactment, the White House had warned that adoption “will compel [the United States] to fundamentally reassess our relationship with Georgia.”Footnote ¹¹ With its final passage, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that the law “would stifle the exercise of freedoms of association and expression, stigmatize organizations that serve the citizens of Georgia, and impede independent media organizations working to provide Georgians with access to high quality information.”Footnote ¹² Responding to the law's adoption and “the repressive tactics used [by Georgian authorities] to quell legitimate dissent [protesting the law],” Secretary Blinken announced a visa restriction policy for Georgia applicable to those “who are responsible for or complicit in undermining democracy in Georgia.”Footnote ¹³ He also announced a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation with Georgia.Footnote ¹⁴ As part of that review, the Defense Department called off a biannual cooperatively led military exercise in Georgia that had been scheduled for July 2024.Footnote ¹⁵ And shortly thereafter, Secretary Blinken paused more than $95 million in assistance “that directly benefits the Government of Georgia,” only retaining programs that “strengthen[] democracy, rule of law, independent media, and economic development.”Footnote ¹⁶

The EU also condemned the foreign influence law upon its passage and indicated that the law “jeopardises Georgia's EU path, de facto leading to a halt of the accession process.”Footnote ¹⁷ The EU soon froze funding for Georgia's participation in the European Peace Facility, a financing instrument for military assistance.Footnote ¹⁸ “[W]e will reduce our direct aid to the Georgian government, and we will try to shift it to civil society and the media,” remarked Pawel Herczyński, the EU Ambassador to Georgia.Footnote ¹⁹

In September, the Treasury Department sanctioned two Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs officials and two right-wing political activists for their part in suppressing protests against the foreign influence law.Footnote ²⁰ The officials, the chief of the Ministry's Special Task Department and his deputy, were designated for overseeing the “violent[] target[ing] [of] Georgian citizens, political opposition leaders, journalists, and youth activists who were peacefully expressing their views,” including through “brutal beatings.”Footnote ²¹ The activists were the founder of Alt-Info, a privately owned far-right, pro-Russian media company that, according to the Treasury Department, “amplif[ies] disinformation and spread[s] hate speech and threats against marginalized communities,” and a media personality associated with Alt-Info who “is one of the most vocal supporters of violence against peaceful demonstrators and marginalized Georgians.”Footnote ²² They were accused of “advocat[ing] for violent attacks” and “directly encourag[ing] violence.”Footnote ²³ In October, the EU cut €121 million in assistance to Georgia as a result of its “democratic backsliding.”Footnote ²⁴

In the parliamentary elections at the end of October, the Georgian Dream party captured eighty-nine seats and the four opposition parties won sixty-one.Footnote ²⁵ President Salome Zourabichvili, who was endorsed by Georgian Dream when elected in 2018 but is now a critic, said that the October election was “a total falsification, a total stealing of votes.”Footnote ²⁶ “We witnessed and were victims of,” she continued, “a real special operation conducted by Russia—a new type of hybrid warfare was waged against our people.”Footnote ²⁷ Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, of the ruling Georgian Dream party, said, in contrast, that the election had been conducted “flawlessly.”Footnote ²⁸ The European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations noted of the election that “[c]ritical violations included violence against opposition members, voter intimidation, smear campaigns targeting observers, and extensive misuse of administrative resources” that “compromised the democratic integrity of the election process.”Footnote ²⁹ Rallies and strikes protesting the election and subsequent government actions have continued from October to the present. In an ongoing crackdown, the government has violently broken up demonstrations, arrested and detained protesters, and raided opposition party offices and activists’ homes.Footnote ³⁰

In late November, the European Parliament “[s]trongly condemn[ed] the numerous and serious electoral violations,” urged the international community not to recognize the election results, and called for new parliamentary elections.Footnote ³¹ In response, Prime Minister Kobakhidze suspended Georgia's EU accession application.Footnote ³² He said that Georgia was European, and “it is our responsibility to make Georgia a full-fledged member of the European family.”Footnote ³³ Nonetheless, he said, “[w]e are a proud and self-respecting nation with a long history. Therefore, it is categorically unacceptable for us to consider integration into the European Union as a favour that the European Union should grant us.”Footnote ³⁴

The United States criticized Georgia's suspension of the EU accession process, “condemn[ed] the excessive use of force by police against Georgians seeking to exercise their rights to assembly and expression,” and halted the U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership because of these “anti-democratic actions.”Footnote ³⁵ It called on the government to “return to its Euro-Atlantic path, transparently investigate all parliamentary election irregularities, and repeal anti-democratic laws that limit freedoms of assembly and expression.”Footnote ³⁶ A subsequent statement by Secretary Blinken promised that “[t]hose who undermine democratic processes or institutions in Georgia . . . will be held to account.”Footnote ³⁷ Soon thereafter, the State Department issued visa restrictions on approximately twenty Georgian government ministers, members of parliament, law enforcement and security officials, and private citizens.Footnote ³⁸ The Treasury Department soon followed with sanctions on Georgian Minister of Internal Affairs Vakhtang Gomelauri and Deputy Head of the Ministry's Special Task's Department Mirza Kezevadze “for brutal and violent crackdowns on members of the media, opposition, and protesters.”Footnote ³⁹ Treasury then designated Georgian Dream founder Ivanishvili for “undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation,” noting that he and his party “eroded democratic institutions, enabled human rights abuses, and curbed the exercise of fundamental freedoms in Georgia.”Footnote ⁴⁰ The European Council did not impose sanctions, due to opposition from Hungary and Slovakia.Footnote ⁴¹

In February 2025, Georgia's parliament stripped forty-nine opposition members of parliament of their mandates.Footnote ⁴² At the same time, it enacted legislation that increased penalties for “[p]etty [h]ooliganism,” “[i]nsulting/offensive act toward/disobeying a policy officer,” and “[v]andalism” and imposed new penalties for “[i]nsulting a Georgian [p]ublic [s]ervant” and “[v]iolating the [r]ules for [o]rganizing or [h]olding [a]ssemblies or [d]emonstration[s].”Footnote ⁴³ The United States has not commented on the new laws beyond an Embassy Tbilisi statement advising U.S. citizens who might be traveling to Georgia that the laws prohibited activities that “in the United States could qualify as free speech.”Footnote ⁴⁴ A European Commission statement said that “[t]hese developments mark a serious setback for Georgia's democratic development and falls short of any expectations of an EU candidate country.”Footnote ⁴⁵ A Venice Commission report concluded that new “measures are likely to have a chilling effect on the exercise of the freedoms of assembly and expression” and were “incompatible with the principles of lawfulness, necessity, and proportionality.”Footnote ⁴⁶

Following the U.S. presidential election, Georgian Dream anticipated that it would have better relations with the United States under President Donald J. Trump. In the weeks leading up to President Trump's inauguration, Prime Minister Kobakhidze said that “[o]ur goal is to restart the relationship with the United States from scratch, to renew the strategic partnership, to do this with specific leadership.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Once President Trump was in office, Prime Minister Kobakhidze welcomed the suspension of U.S. foreign aid through USAID, which, he said, had been used by the United States “to cause unrest in various countries, to organize revolutions, to destabilize countries.”Footnote ⁴⁸ He added, in a reference to the foreign influence law, that “[w]e cannot allow attempts to destabilize our country to be financed from outside.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Prime Minister Kobakhidze aligned himself with the “peace efforts by President Trump,” referring to the shift in the U.S. administration's support for Ukraine.Footnote ⁵⁰ Thus far, the Trump administration has not reciprocated Prime Minister Kobakhidze's entreaties. The United States has not revoked the Biden administration's hold on U.S. assistance to the Georgian government or withdrawn the sanctions and visa restrictions that were imposed.