Oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili appears to be largely responsible for this dissonance between Georgian foreign policy and public opinion.

Through his control of the Georgian Dream party and the government, Ivanishvili may be attempting to manoeuvre Georgia into Russia’s sphere of influence.

It is still possible for the EU to work with Georgia. But the bloc should condition the financial and political support it provides – starting with the 12 points that Brussels designated in June 2022.

Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose fortune is estimated at close to 5 billion dollars by Forbes magazine – has just won a case in Bermuda against Credit Suisse. Also his former business partner Vitaly Malkin - Monegasque resident and Russian oligarch sued the bank in 2022. 

Ivanishvili and Malkin founded Rossiysky Kredit, a bank that would rapidly grow to become the heart of their business empire. In 2012, Malkin headed a delegation of four Russian senators in Washington lobbying against the Magnitsky Act. Vitaly Malkin and his colleagues tried to convince American senators that Sergei Magnitsky was a criminal and that he died from pancreatitis.

Aleksandre Ivanishvili, ‘brother of… the so-called “informal ruler of Georgia” ’, has lobbied for one of the richest people in Russia to avoid sanctions against the Russian Federation, and has business ties with the ‘Russian political elite’ through his wife, Ketevan Kharaidze. 

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has sanctioned relatives of Georgian ex-Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and several Georgian businesspersons, according to a decree dated 19 October.