Irma Inashvili is a Georgian politician. She has been a constituent of the Parliament of Georgia since November 2016, symbolising the Alliance of Patriots of Georgia. She is the current deputy head of the Parliament of Georgia. She has also been the general secretary of the Alliance of Patriots of Georgia since 2014. Under the leadership of Irma Inashvili, the APG is critical of the current government’s arrangement with NATO and its relationship with the US, while at the same time compelling closer ties with Russia.
The Alliance of Patriots party was formed immediately after the coming to power of the ruling Georgian Dream Party in 2012. Domestically, some sense this fraction as a satellite and pro-Russian wing of the ruling party. Due to its explicitly pro-Moscow perspective, the Alliance of Patriots does not enjoy significant support in the country. However, it receives monetary support from Russia: according to the Dossier Center investigative body, the party illegally received $8 million from Russian sources ahead of the parliamentary elections in 2020.
In 2021, Irma Inasvhili, one of the creators of the Georgian pro-Russian political party Alliance of Patriots, published her faction’s open letter to “Your Excellency,” Russian President Vladimir Putin, requesting his assistance in repairing the partnership between their two countries.
The Alliance of Patriots informs Putin—the head of a state that has occupied 20 per cent of Georgia’s territory since August 2008—that the party shares the Kremlin’s worries about Georgian cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and has already developed a concept for Georgia’s military neutrality.
The published letter claims that the majority of the Georgian population keeps neutrality. But opinion polls indicate that the opposite is true: 77 per cent of Georgians (61 per cent fully and 16 per cent somewhat) back Georgia joining NATO.
The letter overlapped with the multinational military exercise Agile Spirit 2021, held in Georgia with the participation of 2,500 military personnel from 15 NATO and Western ally countries—manoeuvres that Russia condemns annually. Inashvili noted that the Georgian government and the opposition United National Movement are destroying the country and that “the director of this theatre is the United States.”
With its open note to Putin, Irma Inashvili and the Alliance of Patriots are apparently trying to demonstrate their loyalty to Moscow in the longings to restore greater Russian patronage. For several years up to 2020, the Alliance of Patriots was clearly believed Russia’s main ally among Georgian parties.
