Protests Erupt in Georgia as It Pulls Back From Pro-Western Path

Thousands of people took to the streets after the government said it had suspended talks on joining the European Union.

Protests resumed in Georgia on Friday after thousands of people demonstrated overnight in front of the Parliament building in Tbilisi, the capital, following a government announcement that the country had suspended its bid to join the European Union for four years.

The announcement has further deepened the conflict between the country’s opposition, which wants closer ties with the West, and the governing Georgian Dream party, which has been pivoting Georgia away from Europe toward Russia and China.

The protests were prompted by an announcement on Thursday by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, who said the country was putting the process of accession into the European Union on hold until 2028.

Mr. Kobakhidze also said that Georgia would decline all grants from the European Union, which has allocated more than $500 million to the country since 2019.

On Friday night, thousands of protesters returned to the Parliament building, blocking Tbilisi’s main Rustaveli Avenue. The day before, they had erected makeshift barricades on the avenue, chanting “slaves” and “Russians,” before they were dispersed by riot police, whose officers used water cannons and tear gas to push the crowd away from the Parliament building.

The police, some of them masked, used rough tactics against protesters and journalists who were covering the rally, pushing and beating some in clashes.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement that its law enforcement officers had detained 43 protesters. The police also said that 32 officers were injured.

A mountainous country of 3.7 million, Georgia has been at the crossroads of great power interests for centuries. The current political crisis was prompted by the disputed victory of the Georgian Dream in parliamentary elections in October.

The opposition, which received 61 out of 150 seats, said the election had been rigged and has since followed through on its vow to boycott the new Parliament.

Mr. Kobakhidze said that Georgia was not abandoning its goal of joining the European Union, but was pausing to reconsider the terms of accession. At the same time, according to Imedi, a pro-government TV network in Georgia, he accused the E.U. authorities of using accession talks as “a tool to blackmail our country and divide the public.”

A representative for the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, declined to comment, although Reuters quoted the European Union’s ambassador to Georgia as saying the move to suspend its membership bid was “heartbreaking.”

He specifically mentioned the calls by the European Union to repeal a recently passed package of laws that ban what is described as L.G.B.T.Q. propaganda and a law that attempts to curb the influence of nongovernmental organizations funded by the West as “actions that amount to renouncing” Georgia’s dignity.

In 2013, a similar U-turn regarding ties to the West made by the government of President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine led to mass protests that lasted for months and ended in bloodshed and his fleeing the country for Russia.

The announcement quickly prompted outrage among the opposition in Georgia, which regards the pursuit of European Union membership as an existential choice that would mark its indefinite departure from Moscow’s orbit.

President Salome Zourabichvili of Georgia, whose official powers are nominal but who emerged in recent weeks as a vocal supporter of the opposition, accused the government of committing a “constitutional coup” in the country.

“Today the course that began months ago leading us from Europe toward Russia has come to an end,” Ms. Zourabichvili said on Thursday. “The illegitimate government declared not peace but war on its own people, its own past, and its own future.”

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Thursday that the Russian government would not interfere in Georgia’s political situation, but he also offered praise.

Speaking at a news conference, he said that he was “amazed at their courage and the character they showed in order to defend their point of view.”

Georgia’s Constitution stipulates that the country’s government “shall take all measures” to “ensure the full integration of Georgia” into the E.U. and NATO.

That constitutional amendment, made in 2018, was endorsed by the Georgian Dream party, but has been steadily moving in the opposite direction since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Jenny Gross contributed reporting.

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