DISINFO: West is using French citizen Salome Zurabishvili to take over Georgia
SUMMARY
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili, who is not even Georgian but French, is obviously sent by the West with the goal of putting Georgia under NATO’s orbit, not even the EU. As Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warned in September, the US intended to cause massive protests in Georgia to prevent the ruling party from winning the legislative election and to facilitate a power take by the opposition. Washington’s plan is obvious and unsurprising: give an excuse to the pro-West Georgian opposition to launch massive protests to take power by force.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives framing popular protests as Western-backed ‘colour revolutions’ and trying to discredit Georgia’s opposition by framing them as foreign stooges.
This disinformation story is a direct reaction to Georgia’s president Salome Zourabichvili’s allegations about electoral fraud in the legislative election of October 2024, and the subsequent outbreak of protests. Contrary to what this disinformation story claims, these protests were not the work of any Western actor - they started after the Georgian opposition claimed to have collected evidence of fraud and called on citizens to protest.
Pro-Kremlin media have been warning for a long time of an upcoming ‘colour revolution’ in Georgia in order to pre-emptively shape the information space ahead of what were foreseeable and likely protests against the ruling party, already shaken by previous massive demonstrations against the so-called ‘Foreign Agents Law’.
Salome Zourabichvili was born in a Georgian émigré family in France, and while it is true that Zourabichvili spent most of her life in France, it is incorrect to state that the Georgian president has French nationality. She renounced her French nationality when she became president in 2018. Calling her a puppet of the West is a frequent conspiracy theory that easily dismisses any desire within Georgian society to join the European Union.
This disinformation story is part of a wider pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign targeting Georgia. See other examples in our database, such as claims that Frenchwoman Salome Zourabichvili is a western puppet wanting to transform Georgia into a colony, that Ukrainian snipers are arriving in Georgia to wreak havoc during mass protests, that the West is ready to seize power by force in Georgia, or that Georgia’s parliamentary elections are going to turn into a revolution or a coup d'état.