Georgian protesters block road to port: reports

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Georgian protesters block road to port: reports

Georgian anti-government protesters have blocked an access road into the country’s main commercial port in the ****** Sea city of Poti, Georgian news agency Interpress reports.

Images showed at least one entrance to the port complex blocked by protesters demonstrating against the ruling party’s announcement on Thursday that it was suspending talks on joining the ********* Union for four years.

Reuters was unable to verify the extent to which the port ******** accessible.

The port is owned and operated by APM Terminals, a Dutch-based unit of Danish shipping company Maersk.

It is the largest sea port in Georgia, handling 80 per cent of the country’s container traffic, according to the port’s website.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze praised police on Sunday for cracking down on protesters who he said were acting on foreign orders to undermine the state.

The ********* Union and the ******* States are alarmed by what they see as Georgia’s shift towards Russia’s orbit.

Big anti-government protests have taken place outside parliament in the capital Tbilisi for the past three nights, and police have fired water cannon and tear gas into the crowds.

Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that an attempted revolution was taking place in Georgia.

The former Russian president said on Telegram that Georgia was “moving rapidly along the Ukrainian path, into the dark abyss. Usually this sort of thing ends very badly”.

Medvedev, once seen as a modernising reformer, has reinvented himself as an aggressive hawk since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin has yet to comment on the latest events in Georgia but it has long accused the US and its allies of fomenting revolutions in post-******* countries that Russia still regards as part of its sphere of influence.

Prime Minister Kobakhidze dismissed criticism by the US, which has condemned the use of “excessive force” against demonstrators.

“Despite the heaviest systematic ********* applied yesterday by the violent groups and their foreign instructors, the police acted at a higher standard than the ********* and ********* ones and successfully protected the state from another attempt to violate the constitutional order,” he told a press conference.

Deepening the constitutional crisis in the country, outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili – a critic of the government and a strong advocate of Georgian membership of the EU – said on Saturday that she would refuse to step down when her term ends later this month.

Zourabichvili said she would stay in office because the new parliament – chosen in October in elections that the opposition claims were rigged – was illegitimate and had no authority to name her successor.

Kobakhidze said he understood Zourabichvili’s “emotional state”.

“But of course on December 29 she will have to leave her residence and surrender this building to a legitimately elected president,” he said.

Georgian Dream has nominated Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former football star with a record of nationalist statements, as its candidate for president.

The head of state will be chosen on December 14 by an electoral college consisting of members of parliament and local government representatives.

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