October 9, 2025 - The South Caucasus News - SouthCaucasusNews.com

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has congratulated Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on the October 4 local elections, in which, according to official results, the ruling party secured a sweeping victory in all races across all 64 municipalities in the country.

“The confident victory of the Georgian Dream candidates confirms that they meet high standards of responsibility, reliability, and professionalism,” Lukashenko said in a letter to Kobakhidze, Belarus’s BelTA news agency reported on October 9, citing the president’s press service. “It also indicates broad public support for your course toward the country’s sovereign development and the consolidation of society.”

According to the same agency, Lukashenko emphasized a “firm commitment to deepening friendly and cooperative relations with Georgia,” adding, “I am confident that the elected representatives will make a significant contribution to expanding Belarusian-Georgian interregional ties and help implement new trade, economic, and humanitarian projects.”

Georgia’s October 4 municipal vote took place amid a wide opposition boycott, limited credible observation, and ongoing anti-government protests and state repression. Turnout was lower than in previous elections, at 40.93%. Unrest broke out in Tbilisi in the evening, when part of a large protest rally, at the organizers’ call, attempted to storm the presidential palace but were dispersed by riot police. A total of 36 people, including five organizers, have been arrested since, as the ruling party blames a “foreign-managed coup attempt,” vowing a harsh response to protests.

Georgia’s International partners, mainly from the European Union, said, among others, that the lack of credible observation undermined the transparency of the elections and noted that turnout was relatively low. They also called for “calm and restraint” in the post-election period while urging the authorities to uphold citizens’ rights to freedom of assembly and expression. The ruling party, however, has not received congratulations from any of the country’s traditional Western partners.

The exception was Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, who wrote on X, “Our allies scored a sweeping victory in Georgia. Patriots from Georgian Dream won the municipal elections by a landslide, bravo! Congrats to Kakha Kaladze on being re-elected Mayor of Tbilisi. Wonder (though not really) when the EU will condemn the opposition’s violence…” Szijjártó accompanied the post with an old photo of himself and Kakha Kaladze, a former football player who retained his position as Tbilisi mayor for a third term after winning 71.6% of the vote in the capital, where turnout was the lowest nationwide at 31.08%.

Viktor Orbán’s Hungary was also among the few countries that congratulated and recognized Georgia’s widely disputed October 26, 2024, parliamentary elections.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova also praised Georgia’s October 4 elections as “transparent and competitive,” while denouncing what she called “blatant interference” by “a well-known group of Western actors” in the country’s internal affairs.

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