Georgia’s State Security Service has arrested the founder of a non-governmental organisation (NGO, a privately run group operating outside government) on espionage charges, saying he spied for two foreign states at once over several years. The deputy head of the service, Lasha Magradze, announced the case at a briefing on Friday. Conviction under the relevant statute carries eight to 12 years in prison.
The official statement named no one and named no country. Within hours, Georgian outlets identified the man as Gulbaat Rtskhiladze, a Kremlin-linked commentator who built his public career arguing for warmer ties with Moscow. That single detail bends the tidy story about who Georgia’s spy hunts are supposed to catch.
An NGO Founder, Two Handlers, One Sealed File
According to Magradze, the suspect acted in the interests of foreign powers in exchange for money, kept covert contacts with intelligence representatives both inside and outside Georgia, and set up information platforms and events bankrolled through foreign intelligence channels. The accusations describe a long-running operation rather than a single leaked document.
The most striking line in the briefing was that the man allegedly served two foreign states simultaneously, not one.
Notably, the accused simultaneously cooperated with the intelligence services of two foreign states and carried out parallel espionage activities.
That was Magradze, speaking at the Friday briefing. The service declined to identify the suspect or to say which countries he supposedly worked for, leaving the public version of the case almost entirely abstract.
A Kremlin-Linked Target Bends the Easy Story
Rtskhiladze is not an obscure figure. He heads the Eurasia Institute, a group long associated with pro-Russian positions in Georgian public debate, and reporting by the investigative outlet iFact has documented funding from Pravfond, a Moscow-backed foundation, dating back several years. He has spent years pushing for closer relations with Russia, the opposite of the pro-Western civil society the government usually frames as its enemy.
That matters because of how Georgia’s recent arrests are read abroad. The ruling Georgian Dream party stands accused by Brussels and by domestic critics of steering the country toward Moscow and squeezing pro-European groups. A spy case against a Kremlin-friendly ideologue does not fit that template.
It is the kind of fact that should slow down anyone reaching for a one-line explanation. If the espionage charges were purely a weapon against Western-leaning critics, the Eurasia Institute would be an odd target. The arrest suggests the net is wider, or the motives murkier, than a simple pro-Moscow purge.
None of the allegations have been tested in court, and the identification rests on Georgian media rather than the security service itself. The point is not that Rtskhiladze is innocent or guilty. It is that the case scrambles the map readers have been handed.
Four Arrests, Four Directions, Five Weeks
The Rtskhiladze case did not arrive alone. On the same day, the service detained the journalist Irakli Chikhladze, editor-in-chief of the analytical portal Newcaucasus, on a separate espionage charge tied to a single foreign state. Together with two earlier cases, that makes four arrests in barely five weeks, pointing in strikingly different directions.
Lined up side by side, the pattern is less a campaign against one enemy than a broad reach of the same statute against very different people.
| Suspect | Role | Timing (2026) | Alleged beneficiary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tamaz Goloev (Goloti) | Resident of Russian-occupied Akhalgori district, aged 27 | Late April | Russia |
| Giorgi Udzilauri | Former press chief at Cartu Holding, founded by Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili | Early May | A “European state” |
| Gulbaat Rtskhiladze | Founder of the Eurasia Institute, a pro-Russian NGO | 30 May | Two unnamed states |
| Irakli Chikhladze | Editor-in-chief of the Newcaucasus portal | 30 May | One unnamed state |
Article 314 Returns From the Margins
Every one of these cases runs through the same legal channel. Article 314 of Georgia’s Criminal Code defines espionage and sets a sentence of eight to 12 years. It is a serious charge, and until recently it was rarely used in public.
For most of nearly 14 years of Georgian Dream rule, high-profile spy prosecutions were uncommon, with few open scandals reaching the courts. That changed sharply this year. The security service has now reported a string of espionage detentions in 2026, with investigators describing encrypted communications, conspiratorial meetings abroad, and networks of paid informants in language that echoes from case to case.
Several of the files have also been classified, which keeps the evidence out of public view while the accusations circulate freely. The result is a set of grave charges that the public is asked to accept largely on the state’s word, against suspects whose alleged foreign sponsors are never named.
The Civil-Society Squeeze Behind the Spy Files
The arrests land on top of a legal environment that has tightened steadily around independent groups and reporters. Over the past two years, Georgian Dream has assembled a stack of measures that constrain who can fund civic work and what critics can publish:
- A foreign agents law adopted in 2025 that forces foreign-funded groups to register and threatens criminal penalties of up to five years for non-compliance.
- A rule requiring government approval for foreign grants, with fines set at twice the value of any unapproved funding.
- Broadcasting amendments banning foreign financing for broadcast media and widening regulators’ control over content.
- The freezing of bank accounts at several prominent watchdog organisations.
The Foreign-Agent Architecture
Taken together, these rules give the state a financial lever over almost every independent organisation in the country. The detail behind Georgia’s foreign-agent legislation and frozen NGO accounts shows how registration duties and grant approvals can be turned into criminal exposure, well before any espionage charge enters the picture.
Press Under Sustained Pressure
Reporters have felt the same squeeze. Reporters Without Borders catalogued roughly 600 documented attacks on Georgian media in a single year, ranging from raids and tax investigations to physical assaults. Against that backdrop, charging an editor with spying reads to many journalists as the next escalation rather than an isolated event.
The European Exit
The geopolitics frame the rest. Georgia won EU candidate status in December 2023, then watched the government shelve the process; the prime minister announced Tbilisi would freeze its accession drive, and the European Commission later branded the country a candidate “in name only.” Independent assessments such as the International Crisis Group’s analysis of Georgia’s turn away from the European Union trace how each domestic crackdown widens the gap with Brussels.
What the Sealed Files Signal
The simplest takeaway is also the most uncomfortable one. A government accused of leaning toward Russia has now jailed a pro-Russian NGO chief, a journalist, an alleged Russian asset, and a man said to have served a European state, all under the same espionage article, with the evidence largely sealed and the foreign sponsors left blank. The charge has become flexible enough to fit almost anyone, which is exactly what makes it useful. As the case for fresh EU decisions on Georgia argues, the direction of travel is already clear to outside observers.
If the classified files stay classified and convictions follow at the rate the arrests are coming, the espionage statute moves from a rare instrument to a routine one, and the question stops being who Georgia is hunting and becomes who is safe from the charge at all. If the cases instead collapse in open court, the state will have spent its credibility on accusations it could not prove. The next hearing, whenever it is allowed to be public, is where that test begins.
