Georgia President Slams BBC Over ‘Unverified’ Chemical Claims

Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili sharply criticized the BBC on Tuesday for airing what he described as "completely unverified" allegations that authorities used a chemical agent to disperse anti-government protesters last year, according to the Georgian Public Broadcaster.

“It is very unfortunate that such a well-known media outlet as the BBC allows itself to broadcast completely unverified information and harm our country,” Kavelashvili said, drawing parallels to what he described as previous Western media “disinformation” campaigns involving former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, The Caspian Post reports citing foreign media.

He said the BBC’s reporting misrepresented comments from Konstantine Chakhunashvili, a paediatrician featured in the investigation, claiming the doctor “never discussed that substance at all.”

“Let’s wait for the investigation,” he added, urging law enforcement to probe the matter thoroughly and questioning who might be “behind these coordinated actions” by media outlets, NGOs and opposition parties.

Earlier on Tuesday, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused the BBC of being deliberately fed “false” information aimed at undermining Georgia’s national interests - a move he said “can legitimately be regarded as a crime.”

He argued the broadcaster acted like a “fake television outlet” by relying on the Chakhunashvili family and what he called a “treacherous” Special Task Force representative, alleging they had spread “countless lies.”

Kobakhidze insisted that Georgia provided extensive responses to the BBC’s inquiries and denied outright that the substance mentioned in the report - the World War I-era chemical agent “Camite” - had been used. “That is simply a lie,” he said.

The BBC investigation, published on Sunday, suggested that Georgian authorities deployed the chemical agent during last November’s protests. In response, the ruling Georgian Dream party announced it will file legal action in international courts, saying the BBC had failed to include “even 1 percent” of the information Tbilisi supplied.