Day: November 3, 2025
#SouthCaucasus
bne IntelliNews – #Pashinyan urges end to ‘Soviet #KGB worldview’ in Armenian-Azerbaijani relations https://t.co/EprljNEV6V
Against this backdrop, Pashinyan’s call to discard Soviet-era worldviews could be seen as both an appeal for national introspection and a… pic.twitter.com/ffJU9T8ppv— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) November 3, 2025
The organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has published its 2025 Press Freedom Predators list, which, alongside authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, also includes Georgia’s informal ruler Bidzina Ivanishvili.
The “Press Freedom Predators” list forms part of RSF’s annually released World Press Freedom Index, which assesses the state of media freedom worldwide, while the list highlights individuals who trample on press freedom.
Alongside Bidzina Ivanishvili, the list includes Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Afghan leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, the Communist Party of China, the military junta of Burkina Faso, and others.
The list is divided into five categories based on different criteria: political, security-related, economic, legal, and social. Bidzina Ivanishvili is among those who financially undermine the media.
“Because they throttle news media or subject them to arbitrary judicial pressure, Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States, Deputy Prosecutor Seng Heang in Cambodia, and the Georgian billionaire oligarch and former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili are included in this list of 2025 predators,” RSF wrote on its website.
During the spring 2025 session alone, the Georgian Dream-dominated parliament rapidly passed five legislative amendments that significantly restricted media activity and freedom of expression in Georgia.
These laws effectively ban media outlets funded from abroad, strengthen state control over the press, and allow journalists to be punished for expressing critical opinions.
“The Euronest delegation cannot tell the Georgian people in which direction to develop their own country,” said Georgian Foreign Minister Maka Bochorishvili.
According to her, the decision of the Georgian delegation not to participate in the plenary session of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly is the right one. Bochorishvili also stated that a platform created for cooperation but no longer serving this purpose cannot be of interest.
Euronest is a parliamentary organisation of the Eastern Partnership between the European Union and its Eastern European partners.
“This platform was never created for that purpose. None of its documents state that Euronest was established for the European Parliament delegation to adopt such an attitude towards neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, its work has developed in this way.
The platform already has too few Eastern Partnership countries as it is. The decision of the Georgian delegation is the right one. A platform that was created for cooperation but no longer serves this purpose cannot be of interest to us,” said Maka Bochorishvili.
What happened
On 31 October, the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly published a resolution stating that recent events in Georgia demonstrated a serious regression of democracy. According to the authors of the resolution, Georgia is a vivid example of how Russia seeks to dominate the information space of Eastern Partnership countries “where it does not resort to military intervention.”
The resolution mentions the “falsified parliamentary elections” in Georgia on 26 October 2024, the Georgian government’s suspension of negotiations on the country’s EU accession, and the adoption of new anti-democratic laws.
According to Euronest, the Parliamentary Assembly condemns the systematic attacks by the Georgian Dream party on Georgia’s democratic institutions, political opposition, independent media, civil society, academia, and the independence of the judiciary.
The Georgian parliament’s delegation did not participate in the 12th plenary session of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly held in Yerevan.
Georgian Foreign Minister on Euronest
Bella Culley, a 19-year-old British woman arrested in Tbilisi in May on drug trafficking charges, was released on November 3, under a plea agreement after reportedly admitting guilt and paying a fine.
Culley, who is eight months pregnant, was sentenced to five months and 24 days in prison, which she had already served, and was fined GEL 500,000 (USD 184,000).
The teen, who went missing in Thailand, was arrested on May 13 at Tbilisi International Airport after law enforcement officers reportedly found approximately 12 kilograms of marijuana and 2.07 kilograms of hashish in her luggage. She was charged with storing and selling an exceptionally large quantity of drugs, an offense punishable by 16 to 20 years in prison or life imprisonment.
Tbilisi City Court Judge Giorgi Gelashvili ruled that the five months and 24 days Culley spent at Rustavi Women’s Penitentiary No. 5 would be counted as time served. Prosecutor Vakhtang Tsalughelashvili said the prosecution had taken into account her “health condition,” “admission of guilt,” and “cooperation with the investigation” in proposing a reduced sentence. Additionally, Culley’s family has transferred USD 187,000 to the court to secure her early release. The court had reportedly initially considered reducing her sentence to two years.
During the previous court hearings, Culley claimed that she had been coerced by a criminal group through “violence and torture” into transporting a suitcase filled with drugs to Georgia.
“I didn’t want to commit this act – they forced me under violence and torture,” she told the court, according to RFE/RL’s Georgian Service. “I was only planning to travel. I’m a loving person, a university student training to become a nurse. I was only planning to travel, and bad things happened to me.”
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