Georgia’s former pro-EU president, Salome Zourabichvili, was targeted by egg-throwing demonstrators at Tbilisi Airport on Tuesday as she flew home from the Munich Security Conference.
Georgian TV channel Pirveli reported that police did not intervene.
The incident occurred a day after former prime minister Giorgi Gakharia received similar treatment at the hands of activists at the same airport upon his return from Munich, local media reported.
Gakharia, who leads the opposition Gakharia for Georgia party, issued a statement in which he blamed a “pre-organized ‘special group’” for the attack.
He also alleged that the incident had been orchestrated by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a French-Georgian oligarch who founded the governing Georgian Dream party and is widely seen as Georgia’s de facto ruler.
Upon her arrival from the Munich Security Conference, 🇬🇪 Georgia's pro-Western president @Zourabichvili_S is thrown at with eggs by the Georgian Dream regime’s titushky at the Tbilisi airport.
— Jakub Bielamowicz (@KubaBielamowicz) February 18, 2025
Yesterday, the same group assaulted ex-PM Giorgi Gakharia. pic.twitter.com/qni88kCAMy
“It is clear that Ivanishvili is frightened by the results of the Munich Security Conference, and this hysteria is caused by that,” the statement was quoted by public broadcaster 1TV as saying. “Our political force will do everything to ensure that Ivanishvili loses what’s most precious to him—money and power—so that he can never again commit violence against the Georgian people.
“The police present at the scene, who were also pre-warned, aided them through complete inaction,” the statement claimed.
Protests have gripped the South Caucasus country since last October, when the pro-Moscow Georgia Dream won parliamentary elections Zourabichvili and others claim were rigged.
The demonstrations received fresh impetus following Tbilisi’s unilateral suspension of EU accession negotiations in November 2024.
