In an interview with the Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said, “There are huge problems in the international media, in the European media specifically.”

“I have talked about the Global War Party, and we have this kind of feeling, information-based feeling, that the European media is quite under coordination by this Global War Party. It’s about most of the European media channels, not all the channels, but most of the media outlets are under coordination. So, we have a very strong feeling in this respect. And this kind of fake news, which is very much relevant to Georgia and international media, has something to do with this overall coordination and censorship,” the PM noted.

According to Kobakhidze, “There is a lot of censorship in the European media, a lot of coordination to spread a lot of fake news against our country, which has nothing to do with realities.”

“But the real situation is that, again, we are pro-Georgia, and we are concentrated on defending our national interests. And I can provide just one specific example, which shows how non-realistic the information and international media is. Let’s compare Georgia with Moldova. So, when the international media writes about Moldova, they are saying that it’s the most pro-European, pro-Western country, very much against Russia, etc. But the facts are the following.

Georgia has no diplomatic relations with Russia, and Moldova has diplomatic relations with Russia. Moldova is a member of CIS. CIS is the key inter-state community under the Russian umbrella. And nobody is criticizing that. Georgia is not part of CIS. Moldova is part of the CIS, and nobody is criticizing that. So, we had to listen to a lot of criticism, including from the European Parliament, when they were adopting these five different resolutions about Georgia not introducing sanctions against the Russian Federation. For example, the fifth European Parliament resolution about Georgia directly tells us to introduce sanctions against the Russian Federation. Moldova is not introducing sanctions on Russia as well. But you cannot find any single statement by the European Parliament, by any representative of the European Commission, European Council, etc. You cannot find any criticism in the international media. So, we are both not introducing sanctions against the Russian Federation.

There is plenty of criticism against Georgia. Zero about Moldova. So, these are the double standards. When we talk about the peoples of Georgia and Moldova, in Georgia, the support to the European integration is more than 80%. And this is also thanks to the government. So, we are saying consistently since 2012, when we became the ruling party, that Georgia should be approved. It was our party, the ruling party, which introduced the relevant amendment to the constitution of Georgia back in 2017, which says that European integration should be the task of all constitutional bodies. So, currently, thanks to our decision, European integration is not only a kind of choice of the executive branch or the government or just specified by the parliamentary resolution. It’s a constitutional goal of Georgia.

We have fixed these goals in the constitution. It was our decision. And the opposition, who is now saying that the Georgian government is pro-Russian, not sufficiently pro-European, they did not vote for the relevant constitutional amendments. So, that’s the truth. The rest is just speculation, again, so if you compare, and when we talk about the Moldovan people, so in Georgia, the support for European integration in the society is more than 80%. In Moldova, there was a referendum about the EU issue and only 45% of Moldovan residents, I mean the resident population, voted in favor of the EU integration.

And now, these people, the European Parliament, the European Commission, some bureaucrats, some former bureaucrats and politicians from the former US administration, they used to say that Moldova was pro-European and against Russia, and Georgia is anti-European and pro-Russian country. So you can see how rough these populations are. But again, there is a huge coordination in international media, a lot of censorship, which has nothing to do with the freedom of media, which has nothing to do with the freedom of speech, it’s just the fake news, which is one of the most important problems for the European Union’s political space in general, and for the European media in particular,” he said.