This Monday, Georgia accused a senior Ukrainian official of preparing a coup to overthrow the government of the Caucasus country, at a time when relations between Kiev and Tbilisi are deteriorating.
Georgia’s National Security Service accused Georgi Lortkipanidze, deputy head of Ukraine’s military counterintelligence service, of plotting to “violently overthrow the government” with the complicity of a “foreign state.”
Lortkipanidze is a former Georgian Deputy Minister of the Interior (equivalent to the Ministry of the Interior).
Georgian National Security also named a former bodyguard of former President Mikheil Saakachvili, who previously held official positions in Ukraine, as one of the accomplices of Georgians who fought against Russian forces on Ukrainian territory.
Some of these people “are being trained near the border between Ukraine and Poland,” the Georgian National Security Service said.
According to an official statement, the alleged plan called for anti-government demonstrations in Tbilisi “in October and December”, the dates when the next assessments of Georgia’s progress in the European Union (EU) accession process were due to be published.
The government in Tbilisi has been accused of collaborating with the Kremlin despite the deployment of Russian troops in the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia since Moscow’s invasion in 2008.
In July, Kiev summoned the Georgian ambassador and accused Tbilisi of torturing Mikheil Saakachvili, also a Ukrainian citizen and adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, in prison.
In June 2022, the EU denied Georgia candidate country status and granted it to Ukraine and Moldova.
Brussels asks Tbilisi for reforms in the legal system and the electoral system, and demands guarantees on press freedom and “actions to fight against oligarchs”.
In early March, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Tbilisi, accusing the government of distancing itself from the country’s pro-Western aspirations.
Source: DN
