Georgia Scrambles After Leak Reveals Rising Dependence On Russian Gas

Via Eurasianet.org,

• Georgia’s imports of Russian gas rose sharply in 2025, with newly disclosed pricing showing higher costs than in previous years.

• The leak has sparked political backlash, as critics warn of renewed dependence on Gazprom and heightened risks of corruption and leverage.

• Authorities have launched a security investigation, framing the disclosure as a cyber incident rather than addressing the substance of the pricing shift.

Officials are in damage-control mode in Georgia after the supposed unauthorized publication of a late 2025 state decree showing that the government’s reliance on Russian natural gas imports is growing and Tbilisi is now paying more for Russian imports than it has in the past.

Earlier in January, Russia’s state-owned Gazprom announced it supplied 40.4 percent more gas to Georgia in 2025 than in the previous year. This surge can be seen within a broader Russian strategy to increase energy exports southward to partially offset the loss of the EU market due to sanctions. Gazprom also reported increases of over 20 percent in gas deliveries to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

But the increase in import volume is only part of the story in Georgia: the revelation that Georgia is paying a premium for Russian gas has dealt a serious PR blow to Georgian Dream leaders. 

On January 13, the Georgian Government Administration published a decree, dated December 25, 2025, detailing the cost of gas purchased from Gazprom, although it was formally classified as a commercial secret. According to a local media outlet, Georgian Business Media (BMG), the contract specifies that Georgia pays $215 per thousand cubic meters (tcm) for the first 250 million cubic meters of Russian gas. Any imports above that volume cost $185/tcm. Previously, the country paid a flat rate of $185/tcm.

“From 2025, the cost of imported Russian gas has therefore increased,” a BMG report noted, even as Georgia continues buying larger volumes each year. 

For Georgia, the growth in Russian imports marks a stunning turnaround that coincides with the Georgian Dream’s geopolitical pivot away from the EU and United States. For much of the past two decades, following its brief war in 2008 with Russia, Georgia worked to wean itself off Russian energy and instead secure gas from Azerbaijan. 

Azerbaijan presently is Georgia’s main supplier, with Azerbaijani gas imports planned to account for 87 percent of the overall total for 2026. But imports from Baku are declining as the share of Gazprom’s more expensive imports steadily climbs. 

Russia’s rising share is raising questions about the government’s motives. Critics argue that moving away from internationally protected gas supplies to “old, unreliable infrastructure” exposes Georgia to both political blackmail and graft.

“We are effectively being tied to Gazprom. This is not just a political alignment issue, but also a matter of corruption, as all agreements with Gazprom are confidential and involve private interests,” former MP and economist Roman Gotsiridze said.

Curiously, even though the pricing decree was published by a government-connected entity, top Georgian Dream officials are treating the disclosure as an unauthorized and potentially illegal leak.

Georgia’s State Security Service has launched an investigation into alleged sabotage and “unauthorized access to a government computer system.”  

A statement issued by the State Security Service added: “the basis for the investigation was information received from the Georgian Government Administration that an alleged cyberattack and certain manipulations were carried out on the administration’s website, which aimed to damage the state interests of Georgia by spreading incorrect information in the public space, including causing political and economic consequences harmful to the country.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 01/27/2026 - 06:30

How German Media Cast Trump As Evil, And Davos Elites As Moral Saviors

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Donald Trump’s appearance at the World Economic Forum was portrayed by the German media as the very embodiment of evil against the pristine white backdrop of Davos’ snow. To cast politicians like von der Leyen, Merz, and Macron as the “good” counterparts only exposes this media spectacle for what it is: farce.

A love-hate relationship has developed between U.S. President Donald Trump and the German press. Almost every time he appears in public—which, in fact, happens daily—the bureaucrats in newsrooms react with a Pavlovian reflex. Even his Davos speech on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum, delivered without rancor despite Europe’s noticeably skeptical stance toward the U.S., provoked a maximal defensive reaction. 

Establishing the Contrast

Der Stern portrays Trump as the West’s isolator, a power politician who “ate humble pie” in Davos, and labels his speech simultaneously as a declaration of NATO’s bankruptcy. As if to keep the German fight against Trump alive at all costs, the Frankfurter Rundschau warned not to be lulled by the U.S. President’s moderate tone. The headline reads martial—Trump reliably sells well.

It also irritates the German media that Trump regularly exposes European leaders like Emmanuel Macron to public ridicule. Naturally, even Tagesschau dispatches its fact-checkers against him. His speech was reportedly riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods.

If only they were as precise and attentive when Macron, Merz, and von der Leyen stack lie upon lie—whether regarding their domestic policies, the state of the economy, the Ukraine conflict, or the failed energy transition now driving Europe into a spiral of poverty.

Even the fact that an Orwellian surveillance state is rising before our eyes, heavily supported by Germany, does not trouble German journalists. In short: we are the good, the evil sits in the White House. And we, the good, are merely protecting Europe’s docile lambs from the toxic poison of patriotic spirit that Americans are eager to inject with their virile obsession with “can-do” governance.

They despise healthy patriotism, a lean state, the ostentatious fight for free speech, and the dismantling of the NGO behemoth—all these achievements of a mature civilization that Brussels-style centralism seeks to dissolve in the European hyper- and control-state for the “common good.”

Together with politics, the German media has established a Manichaean worldview. Every over-the-top appearance by the U.S. President, perhaps difficult for European tastes to digest, only eases the camouflage. The Americans’ power-political interests—shaped by domestic pressure, externally funded protest waves, the fentanyl crisis, and the costly Pax Americana quietly accepted by Europe—play no role in the German media’s strategic considerations. 

They side with the presumed good—those exploiting climate apocalypse, Euro-protectionism, and the systematic dismantling of civil liberties. Simply emphasize it long enough, project the public’s anger at the country’s growing crises onto a figure of hate, and the media can distract from its own failures. That figure is Donald Trump.

Growing Distance

Must one not, in view of Europe’s migration crisis and disastrous energy transition, concede Trump is right on the issues? The German commentary’s arrogant condescension only reflects the detachment of its political caste. From the perspective of a German-driven Euro-socialism, the American spirit, the supposed cowboy mentality, and spontaneity are ridiculed. Listening to each other is no longer desired; the American stance is deemed antagonistic, and within the woke zeitgeist, morally reprehensible.

A reflex so foolish it is almost physically painful to follow such journalism. Shouldn’t the media’s task be to explain Europe’s true geopolitical situation and the challenges arising from energy scarcity and resource constraints?

European nations would do well to align with the Americans, make peace with Russia, and return to political reason. For the Westdeutsche Zeitung, however, Trump’s Davos speech was merely self-praise. He reportedly spread lies and slanders about the old continent.

Hovering above all is the hope that in three years a pro-European, globalist president will succeed Trump—a figure in the style of Barack Obama, picking up the red thread of climate socialism and protecting Europeans from their peculiar isolationism and its consequences.

If the EU’s climate-socialist project collapses in the foreseeable future, a strong, autonomous U.S. would be the destination for a panicked flight of capital—a potential end to the Brussels central apparatus. Returning to the climate-socialist fold would only succeed via digital currency controls and capital movement restrictions, which explains Europe’s attacks on Trump’s presidency. The fact that former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, now a Canadian Prime Minister, has devoted himself to European politics adds particular gravity to the U.S. attempt to politically control its hemisphere.

Trump’s patriotic project’s failure is precisely in the Euro-socialists’ interest. German media have, for a decade, cultivated the image of an erratic, irrational, intellectually limited chauvinist with great success. The constant repetition of identical interpretations of his actions, their moral appraisal, and the dramatic escalation under the mantra of a rules-based world order have created a narrative leaving no room for ambiguity—purely Manichaean.

On one side: Trump, the personification of evil, pushing European humanists into a corner with his tariffs, now even flirting with an aggressive land grab in Greenland. He is Lucifer in the White House. On the other: light, good—the EU, the great peace project, originally just a bulwark against the Soviet Union, now reimagined over decades as the climate savior and moral last instance of the West.

False Game

It is precisely this power that has for four years kept the disastrous war of attrition in Donbass alive. And it is not Trump, but European politicians who instill the specter of an imminent Russian invasion into the minds and souls of citizens via increasingly shrill tones across all media. Day by day, week by week, a scenario of maximum threat is conjured, morally discrediting any deviation and painting negotiation readiness as weakness—or even betrayal.

The mass deaths in Ukraine reveal Europe’s ethical decay without mercy. Beyond that, escalation against a nuclear power is militarily hopeless, economically a suicide mission, and ethically reprehensible. Macron, Merz, and von der Leyen have long known this war is unwinnable—regardless of funds sent to Ukraine. 

It is now only about delaying Ukraine’s bankruptcy in hopes of a military miracle—one only the Americans could force. And that requires, as mentioned, a new pro-European U.S. president.

States and European banks are heavily invested in Ukraine. An uncontrolled collapse could shake Europe’s financial system so violently that even the great debt crisis 15 years ago would appear as mere prelude.

Trump still seeks a negotiated solution in this conflict, which would end Europe’s dream of regime change in Moscow and a controlled exploitation of Russian resources, crucial to recapitalizing European states and banks.

The manichean media effect against American policy becomes even more dangerous amid Europe’s growing censorship apparatus. Many fail to realize that Trump’s failure would politically eliminate the last influential advocate for free speech, free markets, and rational deregulation.

It was Americans—Vice President J. D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who repeatedly intervened in Brussels in recent months when digital freedom on platforms like X, Telegram, and Meta was acutely threatened.

The list of European defenders of freedom has, by contrast, become alarmingly short.

Tyler Durden Tue, 01/27/2026 - 05:00