# Irakli Kobakhidze **Irakli Kobakhidze** (born 1978, Tbilisi) is the prime minister of [[Georgia (country)]] and, since May 2025, also chair of [[Georgian Dream]] — the officeholder who announced the freeze of Georgia's EU path and who fronts the lawsuit to ban the opposition. He is a constitutional lawyer by training, with a doctorate from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (2006), and a party official by career: Georgian Dream's executive secretary from 2015, then speaker, party chair and prime minister in a party whose founder, [[Bidzina Ivanishvili]], nominates its prime ministers. ## Career | Date | Event | |---|---| | 18 November 2016 | Becomes speaker of parliament | | 20–21 June 2019 | Resigns as speaker after the "Night of Gavrilov": Russian Duma member Sergei Gavrilov addressed an interparliamentary assembly from the speaker's chair in Tbilisi, setting off protests that police violently dispersed | | January 2021 | Becomes Georgian Dream chair | | 8 February 2024 | Confirmed prime minister, 84–10, succeeding Irakli Garibashvili | | 28 November 2024 | New cabinet confirmed 84–0 with the opposition boycotting; the same day announces the EU freeze | | 5–16 December 2024 | Sanctioned by [[Ukraine]] and banned from entering [[Estonia]] and [[Lithuania]] over the crackdown on protesters | | 7 May 2025 | Re-elected party chair at an 18-minute congress, after Garibashvili quit politics — now PM and chair at once | | 29 September 2025 | Announces the Constitutional Court suit to ban the main opposition parties, calling it "a democratic process"; filed 31 October | | 25 September 2026 | At the UN General Assembly: "Twenty percent of our country remains under the occupation of the Russian Federation" | ## The EU freeze On 28 November 2024 Kobakhidze said: "We've decided not to put the issue of opening negotiations with the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028" — while maintaining that the goal was still membership by 2030. The protests that followed have run ever since. When the EU suspended visa-free travel for Georgian official passport holders in March 2026, he called visa-free travel "not existential." ## The double line on Russia Kobakhidze's position is formally hostile to Moscow and functionally aligned with it. On 11 August 2026, the anniversary of the 2008 war, he said diplomatic relations "cannot be restored" while Russia recognizes [[Abkhazia]] and [[South Ossetia]]; at the UN he named the Russian occupation. A week earlier he claimed the opposition's "Russophobia" only began after 2022 and was directed by the "Global War Party" — the conspiracy narrative, shared with Ivanishvili and Speaker Shalva Papuashvili, that names Western defense interests, investment funds and George Soros as the forces trying to drag Georgia into war. See [[George Soros Conspiracy]]. His one forced resignation came at a moment of visible Russian presence — a Russian legislator in the Georgian speaker's chair. Everything since has been built on denying that the government's direction has anything to do with Russia. See [[Post-Soviet States]] for why that is the defining feature of the Georgian case. ## See Also - [[Georgian Dream]] - [[Bidzina Ivanishvili]] - [[Mikheil Kavelashvili]] - [[Georgia (country)]]