European Embrace or Russian Straitjacket? Georgia’s Fateful Choice

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 183 (February 17, 2026)

The European Union’s 20th sanctions package marks an unprecedented escalation: for the first time, Brussels is targeting a port in a country that holds EU candidate status. Georgia’s Kulevi terminal, now implicated in facilitating Russian oil shipments, encapsulates a broader transformation underway in Tbilisi — one that is steadily converting a once-promising candidate for European integration into a facilitator of sanctions evasion for Moscow.

In early February 2026, the European Commission unveiled its 20th sanctions package against Russia, designed to intensify pressure on Moscow ahead of the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Among the most striking elements was a proposal to sanction ports in third countries for the first time — specifically, Georgia’s Black Sea port of Kulevi and Indonesia’s Karimun. The inclusion of a Georgian port in EU sanctions represents a watershed moment, signaling that Brussels now views Tbilisi not as a partner on the path to membership, but as a participant in circumventing the Western-led sanctions architecture.

This development crystallizes a trajectory that has been building since 2024. Under the ruling Georgian Dream party, Georgia has moved from democratic backsliding to active alignment with Russian economic interests — all while maintaining the constitutional fiction of European integration. The country that once stood as the Eastern Partnership’s success story now risks becoming a cautionary tale of how quickly geopolitical orientation can shift when institutional safeguards erode.

The Kulevi Terminal: Where Oil Meets Intelligence

The Kulevi oil terminal, situated on the Black Sea coast between Poti and Anaklia, has operated for decades under Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR ownership. However, its strategic significance transformed in late 2025 with the launch of Georgia’s first oil refinery — a development that coincided with a dramatic surge in Russian crude imports. According to data from Georgian customs and the Comtrade platform, Russian oil supplies to Georgia increased sixteen-fold in 2025, reaching 225,300 tons valued at a record $95.8 million.

The connections surrounding this refinery are troubling. According to the Russian investigative outlet Proekt, the facility’s founder and principal owner is businesswoman Maka Asatiani. Her son, Kahi Zhordania, reportedly conducted joint business in Russia with the son of Vladimir Alexeyev, the First Deputy Chief of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). This connection between Georgian energy infrastructure and Russian military intelligence raises fundamental questions about the nature of economic ties forming between Tbilisi and Moscow.

The EU’s draft sanctions documentation states that the Kulevi port is being used for maritime transport of crude oil and petroleum products “produced in Russia or carried by Russian tankers using irregular and high-risk schemes.”  In late January 2026, the oil tanker Silvari — identified as part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” — entered Georgian territorial waters for the first time, delivering approximately 32,000 tons of oil to the port. If the 20th sanctions package is adopted as proposed, European companies and individuals would be barred from transactions with Kulevi, significantly complicating the port’s financial operations and cooperation with Western partners.

From Candidate to Pariah: Georgia’s Democratic Regression

The potential sanctioning of Georgian infrastructure cannot be understood in isolation from the broader political transformation that has unfolded since 2024. Georgia received EU candidate status in December 2023, conditional on implementing nine key reforms spanning judicial independence, media freedom, electoral integrity, and anti-corruption measures. Instead of pursuing these reforms, the Georgian Dream government charted a radically different course.

In May 2024, the ruling party pushed through a “foreign agents” law requiring organizations receiving more than 20 percent of funding from abroad to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” — legislation that mirrors Russia’s 2012 law used to decimate civil society. President Salome Zourabichvili vetoed the bill; parliament overrode her veto. The October 2024 parliamentary elections, widely characterized by international monitors as marred by irregularities, vote-buying, and intimidation, prompted opposition boycotts and sustained public protests. On November 28, 2024, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would suspend EU accession negotiations until 2028.

The European Commission’s November 2025 enlargement report delivered a stark verdict: Georgia is now “a candidate country in name only.” Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos addressed the Georgian government directly: “You are not bringing your people to the EU, you’re bringing your people away from the EU.” Georgia’s alignment with EU foreign policy statements and Council decisions on sanctions has declined to 40 percent — down from 53 percent in 2024 — and Tbilisi has not aligned with the vast majority of EU restrictive measures against Russia, Belarus, and Iran.

The Ivanishvili Factor: Russian Roots, Georgian Power

Understanding Georgia’s trajectory requires examining the figure at its center: Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder and de facto ruler of Georgian Dream despite holding no formal office since 2013. Ivanishvili accumulated his estimated $7.6 billion fortune in post-Soviet Russia during the 1990s, acquiring banking and metals assets during privatization. His long-time business partner, Vitaly Malkin, served in Russia’s Federation Council from 2004, appointed by President Vladimir Putin.

Investigative reporting by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has revealed that Ivanishvili’s wife continued expanding personal holdings in Russia as recently as 2024, acquiring property near the elite Peredelkino dacha settlement outside Moscow. Income from the family’s Moscow residence flows through a Russian bank sanctioned by the West. These revelations contradict Ivanishvili’s pledge upon entering Georgian politics in 2011 to divest from Russian assets.

In April 2024, Ivanishvili delivered a rare public speech in which he blamed Western powers — not Russia — for Moscow’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and 2022 attack on Ukraine, framing critics as part of a “Global War Party” seeking to drag Georgia into conflict. This rhetoric, echoing Russian state narratives, has been internalized across the ruling establishment. Prime Minister Kobakhidze has suggested that external forces control the United States and European Union — claims that would be unremarkable in Russian state media but represent a fundamental departure from Georgia’s post-independence pro-Western consensus.

Strategic Implications: The Russian Embrace Tightens

Georgia’s economic reorientation toward Russia extends beyond oil. The country’s dependence on Russian imports has deepened across strategic sectors. Trade in natural gas reached record levels in 2024, with imports valued at $180.9 million — the highest since 2009. Russian tourism and capital flows have contributed to economic growth figures that Georgian Dream leverages for domestic legitimacy, even as this growth entrenches dependence on a hostile neighbor that occupies approximately 20 percent of Georgian territory.

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air has documented “suspicious cases” of Russian oil products being re-exported through Georgia to sanctioning countries, with the country of origin effectively laundered through Georgian intermediaries. This sanctions-evasion infrastructure positions Georgia not merely as a passive beneficiary of Russian economic ties, but as an active participant in undermining the Western response to the invasion of Ukraine.

For Georgian Dream, the calculus appears straightforward: maintaining power requires avoiding accountability mechanisms that genuine EU integration would impose. European accession demands judicial independence, anti-corruption reforms, and electoral integrity — precisely the conditions that would threaten the party’s grip on power. Russia offers an alternative model: economic patronage in exchange for political alignment, with no inconvenient requirements for democratic governance.

The European Union now faces a decision that extends beyond Georgia. If a candidate country can suspend its own accession process, adopt Kremlin-style legislation, facilitate sanctions evasion, and face no meaningful consequences, the credibility of EU enlargement policy is fundamentally compromised.

Yet the tools available to Brussels are limited. Hungary and Slovakia have vetoed sanctions targeting Georgian officials, frustrating efforts to impose personal consequences on those responsible for democratic regression. Suspending Georgia’s candidate status would require unanimity — a bar that has never been met in EU history. The most probable outcome is incremental escalation: port sanctions, diplomatic downgrading, partial suspension of the Association Agreement — measures that signal displeasure without fundamentally altering Tbilisi’s trajectory.

For the Georgian public, the stakes could not be higher. Opinion polling consistently shows that approximately 80 percent of Georgians support EU membership. Protesters have filled the streets of Tbilisi and cities across the country since November 2024, defying water cannons, tear gas, and police brutality. Yet Georgian Dream appears to have concluded that suppressing domestic opposition is easier than satisfying European conditions — and that Russia offers sufficient economic and political backing to weather Western disapproval.

The European dream that Georgians have pursued since independence is becoming a Russian nightmare — not because of external imposition, but through the choices of a ruling party that has determined that autocratic alignment with Moscow better serves its interests than democratic integration with Brussels. Georgia’s constitutional commitment to EU and NATO membership remains, an increasingly hollow testament to aspirations that the current government has abandoned in all but name. The European embrace has been traded for what may prove to be a Russian straitjacket — one that, once fastened, will be exceedingly difficult to remove.