Levan Vasadze - A letter to my conservative British friends

Facts:

Yesterday, on Friday, September 19, 2025, the UK government through its official website www.gov.uk has declared me under sanctions under the following false formulation: “Georgian politician and media mogul Levan Vasadze is targeted for using his platforms to pump out pro-Russian disinformation.” We will demonstrate herein that each of the three statements in this formulation is false. I am neither a Georgian politician, nor a media mogul, nor have I ever “pumped out” any pro-Russian disinformation.

Immediately after this announcement, the banking system in my home country of the Republic of Georgia has persecuted not only me, but also my family members, something only Bolsheviks and Nazis did in the past.

Namely, an LSE listed Georgian bank TBC has blocked all the accounts and credit cards of myself, my wife, a mother of our 8 children, of all our children of age to have cards, of my sister, of my widowed mother, 76, and of a winery in Georgia that does not belong to me, but to my wife and is managed by her.

Later, another LSE listed Georgian bank, Bank of Georgia, demanded that my wife’s winery must close all of its accounts with them. Thus, together with the TBC Bank, Bank of Georgia has jeopardized the jobs of hundreds of Georgian citizens and an income of thousands of Georgian grape farmers, while attacking the noblest of all the Georgian agricultural industries and export-based income and tax earners for the country.

Other Georgian banks where our family and I had accounts moved ahead and restricted our services too.

By doing so, all of these Georgian banks have violated the legislation of a sovereign state. The Constitution of Georgia clearly states, that “Georgia shall protect its citizen regardless of his/her location”. Relying on the Constitution of Georgia and the principle of the presumption of innocence, the National Bank of Georgia, as of 2023, adopted and implemented amendments to the regulation on compliance with sanctions regimes. According to this amendment, The National Bank of Georgia believes that international sanctions may not be applied to a Georgian citizen, unless there is a guilty verdict in the applicable case against them in the court of Georgia. An analogous rule applies to legal entities registered in Georgia, but only where their shares or equity interests are held by Georgian citizens subject to sanctions.

I do not hold and have never held any governmental positions; I am not and have never been a member of any political party either. Therefore, while I am certainly a Georgian public figure, I’m not a Georgian politician;

It is true though that I did attempt to enter Georgian politics in May 2021, having formed a social movement “ERI” with the aim of later transforming it into a political party and participating in the upcoming elections. However, within the weeks of this announcement, I immediately fell ill with a terminal form of blood cancer, called Multiple Myeloma, which may be caused by radiation or poisoning and also, with an AL type Amyloidosis, having been completely healthy before, as a former professional athlete. Despite the suspicious circumstances of my sudden illness, the Georgian government has never investigated the case in spite of my numerous requests.

In the same 2021, I underwent 24 courses of chemotherapy during 6 months, barely survived the treatment and barely escaped the recommended heart and liver transplantation. Despite of all my efforts to recuperate full health, due my persisting weakness and feeble condition, I was forced to abstain from taking part in 2024 parliamentary elections and had to abandon any public appearances and activities related to any form of politics.

It has been over a year and a half, almost two, since I have made my last public appearance related to any social issue in Georgia, having returned to my family life and business, while continuing constant medical treatment of my chronic diseases. Hence, by that measure also, I cannot be qualified as a Georgian politician, but only as a public figure who had to abandon his public writings and podcasts for almost two years.

As for the equally false and ridiculous accusations of me being a media mogul. During my illness and the aforementioned treatment, the information of the story of my struggle was hushed and ignored by an absolute majority of the mainstream media. Only one television interview was recorded with me during the treatment, but for whatever reason even that was published with a one-year delay and with more than half of the content of the interview erased by one of the Georgian television channels, IMEDI TV.

My deathbed “Diary of the Feeble,” which I wrote during the struggle for life was banned by Facebook from distribution, due to the activities of the so-called fact-checkers – essentially the NGO’s funded by the likes of George Soros and USAID.

Under the same pressure, my letter “The Strange Circumstances of my Illness”, which I wrote ahead of the diary and where I gave a factual and an accurate account of the events leading to my strange illness, was erased by Facebook.

This continuous banning of my free of speech has led me to a decision to undertake the cost and the trouble of establishing a small cable TV podcasting channel “ERI Media”, in order to have an outlet for the expression of the conservative opinions of myself and of many respected members of our traditionalist society. Last year, after deciding to abandon my public appearances due to my health limitations, I have also shut down the TV channel and it has been closed ever since (as of today, only the page can be found on social media). Therefore, I am not a media mogul by any measure either.

I have never “pumped out” (what kind of a legal term is this?) any pro-Russian disinformation, which is closely monitored by Georgian regulatory authorities. I have never received any sanctions or penalties from them in that regard, during the short-lived broadcasting of our TV channel and have always expressed all my opinions and analysis freely and politely in accordance with our laws and ethical norms.

I have never supported the war in Ukraine and have always mourned its commencement as any normal human being. My analysis of its root causes has been based on the lectures and writings of many leading western, American, British and European thinkers, diplomats and military and security experts, such as professors Jeffrey Sachs, John Mirschhaimer and Glenn Diesen, ambassador Chaz Freeman, Colonel Douglas McGregor, UN weapons instructor Scott Ritter, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Judge Andrew Napolitano, investigative journalists Simor Hirsch, Chris Hedges, Max Blumenthal, Clayton and Natalie Morris, Tucker Carlson and others.

None of these thinkers has ever been sanctioned by the UK government on the counts of “pumping out” pro-Russian disinformation. One has yet to find any sighting or reference in my analysis to any source of the so-called Russian propaganda and disinformation, since I always try to separate any country’s propaganda from the actual events in and around it.

For example, the sanctions accuse me of claiming as a fact, in one of my conversations, that some of the snipers who killed the civilian demonstrators on Maidan in 2014 were Georgian. However, the precise transcript translation of that segment of my conversations reads: "I would like to remind you how all this began: Victoria Nuland, who was the United States Secretary of State - in other words, the head of the State Department… Deputy head… went to Kyiv and was handing out pastries to the revolutionaries who were overthrowing Viktor Yanukovych, the legitimately elected President of Ukraine, who did not wish to confront Russia at Europe’s expense. Afterwards, around a hundred of those demonstrators were killed by sniper fire from nearby buildings or hotel windows - bullets fired by snipers among whose ranks, regrettably, there are suspicions that there were Georgian killers as well," which, like everything else in my statements is directly in line with the narrative of many western thinkers and analysts as stated above.

Hence, based on the gross inaccuracies within the grounds for the sanctions declared upon me by the UK government, I can only come to a logical conclusion that the UK government has either been deliberately misinformed about my identity and views by the very NGO’s funded by the likes of now liquidated USAID or George Soros, or is using the above false accusations as an excuse to persecute me for some other reasons that I’m not aware of.

Reflections and thoughts

As I am contemplating the consequences of the British sanctions imposed on me, I’m remembering how I fled with my entire family to the UK and settled to live in Seven Oaks, Kent immediately after the 2008 Russo-Georgian 5 day war. Why would I do that if I did not consider the British culture and society friendly to us?!

My widely known affinity towards Russian culture and Russian people aside, in the terrible days of this short and brutal war, I had my reasons to believe, that if the Russian army decided to advance all the way to Tbilisi and topple the neocon guided, provocative and cruel regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, I would most likely be among the very few Georgians, whom the Russians would urge to cooperate with in managing the post-war country, simply because of my vast contacts base in Moscow during my business years after my US MBA in the 90’s. An ideal plot for any ‘Kremlin spy’ and the very thing the yesterday’s British sanctions accuse me of almost 20 years later.

How did we come to this? Without shedding any crocodile tears as a victim or any vane narcissism in today’s world of omnipresent suffering and injustice, I do have a very clear picture of this and let me share this in a few words my dear friends in the UK, in addition to the introductory factual part rendered as per above.

Who of the Georgian intelligentsia of my generation didn’t grow up on the Beatles and Robert Sturua’s genius interpretations of Shakespeare, Sir Alfred Tennyson’s poetry and Thomas More’s Utopia and heroism for the truth, both Roger and Francis Bacons, William Occam’s razor and Anselm of Canterbury’s theological philosophy, Rolling Stones and Jerome K. Jerome’s humor, excellent soviet cartoons made after Rudyard Kipling’s Maugli and in Vasssily Livanonv’s unbeatable versions of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes?!

Even when reading the French or the American classics, English were often the good side, be it in James Fennimore Cooper’s comparisons on the English colonization of the redskins to the one by the French, or Alexander Dumas’s honest and descent Duke of Buckingham in his love towards the French Queen. Much of the same can be generalized beyond our basic, inbred perception of the West as a whole; we did view it as the shining city on the hill for personal, religious, entrepreneurial and political freedoms. Great Britain - especially.

Need I describe the liberal globalist, anti-traditional disappointment that befell upon us through our new “partners”, who showed no culture of partnership and all the intentions of becoming our new masters? The ongoing impoverishment, de-industrialization and degradation of all post-soviet republics, which was initially blamed upon the so-called transition period, and then explained by our corruption (as if the west does not have it legalized through political its lobbies in DC and Brussels,) simply turned out to be a cruel robbery by the western “investors”.

However, even that would have been less painful and endurable for us, if it wasn’t for something totally unexpected.

Dominated by the globalist liberals, UK’s, Europe’s and US’s foreign policies turned out to be exactly opposite of what we had hoped for:

- instead of a religious freedom, the west did nothing but fund the NGO’s and mass media who relentlessly attacked local churches and religious authorities

- instead of a support or at least a neutrality towards our normal, traditional family values, the west supported or funded almost nothing else but some obscene LGBTQ+ indoctrination of our youth, political parties and politicians who advocated open borders for illegal immigration from the Middle East, liberal narcotics policies, casinos on every corner

- instead of a freedom of speech, the western liberal-globalism has imposed upon us the most shocking Orwellian censorship we could never depict in our wildest imagination

- instead of democracy, the west backed the most cruel and cynical form of dictatorship under Saakashvili’s regime, and continues to support its discredited remains with the constant aim of causing another color revolution

- instead of a balanced and pragmatic regional policy, the west continues to urge all the political forces in Georgia, be it the government or the opposition, to destroy our country in the flames of suicidal Russophobia.

As a result, 30 years later, a demographic collapse (total population of Georgia down from 5.2 million to 3.7 million,) skyrocketing divorce rates (up from 5% in the late eighties to nearly 70% in Tbilisi these days), an epidemic of drug addiction (up from 10 K to 350K people in the same period), gambling and gaming addiction (up from under 10 K to 700K), 1.5 million emigrants, 300 K immigrants, 22% of the territories lost, over 400 K refugees from Abkhazia and Tskhinvali with no chance of return while the west bans us from even talking to Russia, over 330 K men jailed in a brutal 9 year rule of the west’s favorite Saakashvili regime, with eviction rates under 0.5% in Georgian courts, and almost no one being let out without a ransom, 9,940 businesses attacked and confiscated, the percent of the population below the poverty line from under 1% up to under 10%, personal debts of the population towards western controlled banks from zero to over 100% of annual income on average, etc. And to top this off, relentless demands by the west to re-open the second front against Russia, which will inevitably lead to thousands of more deaths of Georgians, more territories lost and 100’s of thousands of new refugees.

Where does the man pick a point to raise his voice against this demise of his motherland in exchange for some vague, unattainable promises to join NATO (Georgia say goodbye forever to reintegrating Abkhazia and Tskhinvali than) and the EU, which the UK itself has Brexited?

For me, and for many of us Georgian fathers, the red line was the mutilation of our children through the sex change operations, their perversion through LGBTQ+ indoctrination in our schools and universities and their confiscation from their parents by the western backed Juvenal Justice laws.

The rest is history. No matter how hard I tried, I was inevitably labeled, by the Georgian liberal media and NGO sector as the cruel enemy of the society, a sadist, a criminal and of course a ‘Russian spy’ - just like every conservative is labeled so around the world.

Seeing the danger of this for my family, I have never wanted to put them through more and for years, I have abstained from practical politics.

In 2021, I decided to cross the Rubicon, due to the continuous accusations of my followers of ‘just speaking and not doing’ and almost died as described above. Hardly anyone in Georgia, both my friends and opponents, has any doubt about the origins of my falling ill.

Long before that fatal step, back in 2007, before I moved to live in the UK, my British friend and I have founded a charity motorbike rally London-to-Tbilisi, and have led it for several years, raising funding for sick children both in Georgia and in the UK.

When living in Kent, together with a visiting Georgian friend, I found the forgotten grave of the siblings, Sir Oliver and Margery Wardrobes, Her Majesty’s first Ambassador to the Caucasus and the translator of Rustaveli’s 12th century poem into English respectively. We cleaned the precious grave and brought flowers to it, indicating our respect towards British culture, even if its descendants forget is sometimes.

When back in Georgia, I invited the Seven Oaks Acorns veteran rugby team, with whom I played while in Kent, to Georgia, hosted them showed them our school, our rugby club and gave them our best reception.

Sitting here now, sanctioned by the UK government for what I can only guess is a result of false reports and accusations by toxic liberals of the Georgian NGO sector I am wondering whether I should even bother with the legal actions in the UK to counter this unjust and ridiculous designation of mine. And, what should be my attitude towards this decision, aimed at artificially making an enemy out me, as a humble member of the Georgian society.

I don’t know if my condition will ever allow me to go back to the active and thankless duty of at least a public figure in Georgia. But, in this era of declining decency, reason, justice and freedom, I guess I owe it to not only my family and myself, but also to the remains of the image of Great Britain in Georgia, to no matter what, appeal for the lifting of this unjust designation of mine.

Hence, I am now simply being forced by the above considerations to prepare my legal defensive actions both in Georgia and in the UK.

However, irrespective of their outcome, if, unfortunately the UK government continues to see the traditional Georgian society as disobedient servants to the detrimental liberal-globalist agenda, I will wear these sanctions, until their eventual cancellation, as a badge of honor, mourning in the meantime my beloved British friendships and connections. This is because we refuse to adopt the above agenda, as a dangerous one to our survival as a nation and as a state.

However, if by God’s mercy, the British society is currently waking up through the streets of London, following in the footsteps of the conservative turning point in the US, I will wait for the Thames and Mtkvari to “carry the bodies of the ideas” of the enemies of Georgian-British friendship. The friendship, which can only be nurtured through a profound respect of each other’s long-standing societal traditions and a St. George-like fidelity to the Truth.

Levan Vasadze, 20.09.2025