The propaganda publication Izvestia (News) has distributed a manipulative video report from Tbilisi. It features Russian propagandist Stanislav Hryhoriev, who has been repeatedly caught in biased coverage of events from the ATO zone in Novosti24 since 2014.

The video footage was filmed against the backdrop of a group of people who had come out to protest outside the Georgian parliament; the protest was called for by Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili due to systematic violations during the elections. In fact, she refused to recognize the results of the parliamentary elections – the previous victory of the Georgian Dream, the current ruling party.

In the story, Hryhoriev describes activists holding Ukrainian and EU flags and a poster with the inscription in English “Georgia is not Russia”:

“This is something that has long been expected in Georgia. Ukrainian activists with the appropriate symbols have appeared on the square near the parliament. They say that quite a few Ukrainians have entered the country over the past week. Their purpose is unclear, perhaps they came to share their protest experience”, the propagandist said.

In fact, the information in the video is distorted, as our Georgian fact-checking colleagues from the Myth Detector organization report. After all, it is the Italian political activists who are depicted in the video who came to support Georgia's European course. That is, this does not change the fact that there were no Ukrainians during the protests; they could also have supported Georgian citizens. However, Russian propaganda, one way or another, demonized potential attempts by Ukrainians to support the country, this time passing off Italian activists as “Ukrainian protesters”.

Italian activists arrived to observe the election process as part of the Europa Radicale delegation, which fights for democracy, rights and laws through “non-violent” forms of protest and initiatives. Since the victory of the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party “effectively stops” Georgia’s accession to the EU due to its non-compliance with the bloc’s principles and values. In particular, this concerns the adoption of the law on “foreign agents”, which had previously led to the suspension of the country’s accession to the EU.

Thus, Russian propaganda is working to create an image of bloody Ukrainian revolutionaries who, on instructions from the West, are seeking to destabilize the domestic political situation in Georgia. Russia is also promoting similar narratives in relation to the United States, accusing them of organizing “color revolutions” and protests if they are pro-democratic and reformist in nature.