(Interpressnews.)

TBILISI, DFWatch–Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has accused the United Kingdom of intensifying efforts to remove Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream (GD), from power by funding opposition-aligned NGOs and training youth movements for “subversive” activities.

In a June 5 statement reported by state agency TASS, and later circulated by many English language outlets also in Georgia, the SVR claimed London was mobilizing civil society organizations to radicalize anti-government sentiment and breathe “new life” into Georgia’s fractured political opposition. The British government, according to agency, is “irritated” by GD’s continued rule and Georgia’s perceived drift from liberal Western influence.

The SVR alleges that the British Foreign Office has identified around 100 youth groups, student associations, feminist and LGBT movements across Georgia to support “subversive work”, which will include training in how to counter law enforcement during protests, evade state surveillance, and carry out sabotage.

According to the statement, the UK’s objective is to unify opposition parties and activist groups into a more coordinated anti-government front, as Georgia approaches local elections later this year.

The UK has not responded to the allegations, amid ongoing tension between Russia and the West over influence in post-Soviet states.

The SVR’s claim aligns with the ruling GD party’s efforts to portray the domestic political scene as penetrated by Western-funded troublemaker groups whose protests are aimed at staging a form of revolution like the Maidan uprising in 2014.

The opposition, on its part, fear the crackdown on the free exercise of democratic freedoms and decry the GD’s turn toward authoritarian rule with last years’s ‘Russian law’, targeting non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in particular, and this year’s harsher FARA law, which has a broader reach and also targets media and individuals assumed to be ‘agents of a foreign prinicipal.’