(Bloomberg) -- Georgia’s premier ruled out holding talks with the opposition after four nights of violent clashes in the capital helped propel the lari to a two-year low against the dollar.
Law enforcement in Tbilisi deployed water canon and tear gas against demonstrators in unrest that started last week after the ruling Georgian Dream party said it was delaying talks on European Union membership until 2028.
“There will be no talks with the opposition,” Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told reporters on Monday. “At this point, there is no basis for dialog with them whatsoever.”
President Salome Zourabichvili has encouraged protests against what she called a “Russian special operation” seeking to bolster Moscow’s influence and thwart the Black Sea nation’s goal of joining the EU and NATO. With her term due to expire this month, she has vowed to remain in her largely ceremonial post, disputing the results of parliamentary elections in October that led to weeks of rallies.
Georgian Dream, which was founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, won the vote to extend its 12-year rule by four more years, according to the Central Election Commission. Opposition lawmakers who back a pro-European charter have boycotted the new parliament and filed motions in court, alleging fraud.
The premier said last week that a repetition of the Ukrainian Maidan, a reference to protests in Kyiv in 2013 when then-President Viktor Yanukovych declined to sign an association agreement with EU and was toppled by popular protests, wasn’t possible in his country.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the circumstances in Georgia were similar. “There is an obvious attempt to exacerbate the situation,” he was quoted by the Interfax news service as saying on Monday. “The most direct parallel that can be drawn is the events on Maidan in Ukraine.”
Kobakhidze reiterated a claim that the clashes were fueled by meddling from overseas, and sought to play down the national currency’s decline against the greenback to the lowest level since September, 2022.
“Regarding the lari rate situation, every time something like this happens, there’s always turbulence,” he said. “But the lari eventually stabilizes, and I’m confident it will do so again. I’ve seen our opponents get overly excited about this issue, but let me be clear: if it weren’t for foreign interference in our development, our economy would thrive even more.”
Georgia applied to join the EU in 2022, along with Ukraine and Moldova, but hasn’t yet formally agreed to open the years-long process of negotiating membership.
The US criticized the government’s actions and suspended its strategic partnership with Georgia, saying the Georgian Dream party’s “various anti-democratic actions” violated the mechanism’s core principles. Kaja Kallas, in her first day as the EU’s top diplomat, said on Sunday that the ruling party’s actions would “have direct consequences” from the EU side.
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