UK Sanctions Georgia Businessmen with Ties to Russian War Effort

The UK has sanc­tioned Geor­gian busi­ness­men with ties to Rus­si­a’s war effort as part of esca­lat­ing mea­sures against Moscow’s influ­ence oper­a­tions in third coun­tries. On 21 Sep­tem­ber 2025, JURIST report­ed that Britain imposed sanc­tions on media mogul Lev­an Vasadze and for­mer Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al Otar Part­skha­l­adze, tar­get­ing indi­vid­u­als the UK claims are aid­ing Rus­sia through pro­pa­gan­da and proxy activ­i­ties in Geor­gia. The arti­cle begins:

The Unit­ed King­dom on Fri­day imposed new indi­vid­ual sanc­tions intend­ed to tar­get hid­den “Geor­gia-linked” per­sons asso­ci­at­ed with Rus­si­a’s war in Ukraine. In a press release, the For­eign, Com­mon­wealth & Devel­op­ment Office jus­ti­fied the new impo­si­tions by not­ing an increased Russ­ian influ­ence in Geor­gia, which is a tar­get of Rus­si­a’s efforts to seek sup­port from “prox­ies in third coun­tries to sup­port its war and pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tions.” The UK gov­ern­ment empha­sized that the mea­sure comes after the UK scaled back its rela­tions with Geor­gia in 2024, a deci­sion dri­ven by the rul­ing Geor­gian Dream par­ty’s adop­tion of Krem­lin-style leg­is­la­tion, its sup­pres­sion of civ­il soci­ety, and the impris­on­ment of oppo­si­tion fig­ures. In total, the sanc­tions imposed through the UK’s Rus­sia Sanc­tions Reg­u­la­tions include two Geor­gian busi­ness­men and two ves­sels, com­pris­ing asset freezes and trav­el bans.

Read more: https://www.jurist.org/news/2025/09/uk-sanctions-georgian-businessmen-with-ties-to-russia/

Key Points

• The UK sanc­tioned Lev­an Vasadze for using his media con­glom­er­ate to spread pro-Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion campaigns.
• Otar Part­skha­l­adze faces sanc­tions as a close ally of oli­garch Bidz­i­na Ivan­ishvili and an alleged FSB influ­ence agent.
• Two Geor­gian ves­sels, Bav­ly and Karakuz, were sanc­tioned as part of Rus­si­a’s shad­ow fleet, trans­port­ing oil.
• Sanc­tions fol­low the UK scal­ing back rela­tions with Geor­gia over the Geor­gian Dream par­ty’s author­i­tar­i­an drift.

Russian Influence Operations Achieve “Soft Annexation” of Georgia

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The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.