By Felix Light
TBILISI (Reuters) – Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili said she talked with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron about the parliamentary election last month in her country that she and the opposition say was rigged.
“In depth discussion with Presidents Trump & Macron,” Zourabichvili, who was in Paris for the reopening of the Notre-Dame cathedral, said on X late on Saturday, underneath a photo showing her, Trump and Macron talking.
“Exposed the stolen election and extremely alarming repression against the people of Georgia.”
Zourabichvili became the voice of the now weeks-long protest movement following the October vote that gave the ruling Georgian Dream party a win and its subsequent announcement that it was suspending efforts to join the European Union.
The leader of Georgia’s main opposition party and several other members have been detained during the protests and on Saturday the opposition said one of its politicians was beaten during a police raid on its offices.
Georgian media also reported that a camera crew from pro-opposition Pirveli TV was attacked by masked men while broadcasting from near the protest site.
“The Russian regime is back at work tonight in Tbilisi – chasing civilians through the streets as they flee terror, targeting politicians, media, artists,” Zourabichvili said in a separate post on X on Saturday, posting a video showing a group of hooded men with batons beating up several men in a building.
Zourabichvili, who has a largely ceremonial role as president, and the opposition have been accusing Georgian Dream of pursuing increasingly authoritarian, anti-Western and pro-Russian policies in the nation of 3.7 million people.
The Kremlin has denied that Russia is interfering in the situation in Georgia, which Moscow compared to the 2014 “Maidan” revolution in Ukraine that overthrew a pro-Russian president.
(Reporting by Felix Light in Tbilisi and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Paul Simao)
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