Tbilisi, Georgia – December 3, 2025 – Georgia’s President Mikheil Kavelashvili sharply criticized the BBC on Tuesday, accusing the British broadcaster of spreading “completely unverified” claims that authorities used a World War I-era chemical agent known as “camite” to disperse anti-government protests in late 2024. The president’s remarks, delivered in a televised address and widely covered by local media, mark the latest escalation in a rapidly deteriorating relationship between the Georgian government and Western news organizations.
“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. He compared the situation to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated accusations of BBC “disinformation” and drew parallels to earlier Western media coverage of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, alleging that outlets like the BBC and CNN had previously amplified fabricated claims that Saakashvili was being poisoned in prison in 2021.
Kavelashvili singled out pediatrician Konstantine Chakhunashvili, one of the key medical sources quoted in the BBC investigation, claiming the doctor has since stated he “never discussed that substance at all.” The president called for a thorough domestic investigation and questioned the motives behind what he described as suspiciously synchronized attacks from media, NGOs, and opposition parties: “How is it that media outlets, NGOs, and political parties speak in one voice, without waiting for facts, immediately attacking the state?”
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze went further in his own briefing earlier the same day, declaring that the BBC had been deliberately fed false information designed to undermine Georgia’s national interests—an action he said could legitimately be treated as a criminal offense. Kobakhidze labeled the BBC a “fake television outlet” for relying on testimony from the Chakhunashvili family and a former Special Task Force officer whom he branded “treacherous.” He insisted that no substance called “camite” was ever used and promised that the Interior Ministry would soon publicly clarify exactly what irritant, if any, had been added to water cannons.
The controversy erupted after the BBC World Service published a detailed investigative report on November 30, 2025, alleging that Georgian riot police mixed bromobenzyl cyanide (commonly known as camite, a highly toxic lachrymatory agent developed during World War I) into water cannons deployed against protesters in November and December 2024. The report cited leaked internal documents, video analysis, medical records from more than 350 affected individuals, and on-the-record testimony from whistleblowers inside the Interior Ministry’s Special Task Force. Victims described symptoms far more severe and persistent than those caused by standard tear gas: burning skin that worsened upon contact with water, vomiting, respiratory distress, and in some cases cardiac irregularities that lasted for weeks.
The BBC’s sources included a senior riot-police officer who claimed camite had been tested in water cannons as far back as 2009 and described it as “ten times stronger” than conventional agents. Independent chemical-weapons experts consulted by the journalists concluded that the symptoms and leaked inventory codes matched bromobenzyl cyanide, a compound banned in warfare since the 1920s and considered obsolete even for riot control due to its extreme toxicity and persistence.
In response, the ruling Georgian Dream party announced on December 1 that it intends to file lawsuits against the BBC in international courts, accusing the broadcaster of ignoring extensive written responses provided before publication and basing its story on “criminals and fabricators.” Party officials complained that not even “1 %” of the government’s rebuttals made it into the final report.
The allegations have reopened raw wounds from the 2024–2025 protest wave, which began after Prime Minister Kobakhidze abruptly suspended Georgia’s EU accession negotiations until 2028—a decision widely interpreted as a pivot toward Moscow. Tens of thousands took to the streets for weeks, braving sub-zero temperatures while facing water cannons, tear gas, and mass arrests. Human-rights monitors documented widespread excessive force, including beatings in detention and the deliberate targeting of journalists and medics.
The protests culminated in the highly disputed indirect presidential election on December 29, 2024, in which the Georgian Dream-dominated parliament elected Mikheil Kavelashvili over the objections of opposition parties and outgoing pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili, who continues to refuse to recognize the new administration and has remained in the presidential palace.
Opposition leaders and civil-society groups have seized on the BBC report to demand an independent international investigation, arguing that only foreign experts can be trusted to examine evidence impartially. Eight opposition parties issued a joint statement calling the alleged use of camite “a crime against humanity” and urging the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to intervene.
Meanwhile, the State Security Service has already opened a criminal probe into the whistleblowers and medical professionals who spoke to the BBC, summoning several for questioning on charges that include abuse of office and collaboration with foreign entities.
The confrontation has further poisoned Georgia’s relations with the West at a moment when Brussels has frozen budgetary support and the European Parliament has repeatedly condemned Tbilisi’s democratic backsliding. For many Georgians—especially the younger generation that led last winter’s demonstrations—the BBC investigation validates long-held suspicions that the government resorted to outlawed crowd-control methods to crush a genuinely popular pro-European movement.
As both sides dig in—the government vowing lawsuits and domestic prosecutions, while protesters and international observers demand transparency and accountability—the camite affair has become the latest flashpoint in Georgia’s deepening political crisis, one that risks pushing the country still further from its stated European aspirations and closer into Russia’s orbit.
