The Hungarian journalist who has reported extensively on the Georgian Dream government’s excesses – and its ever-closer ties to the Orbán administration and Moscow – has been effectively expelled from the Caucasian country. Local authorities cite irregularities in his residence permit; back home, newspapers suggest he may have stumbled upon something awkward in the nexus between the Orbán system and the Georgian ruling party, which is cultivating increasingly warm relations with Russia.
Detained, then sent home
László Róbert Mézes, a Hungarian journalist who has lived in the country for years and regularly filed reports for Magyar Hang on the country’s political crisis, anti-government protests and Georgian Dream’s grip on power, was taken into custody in Tbilisi before being deported. The Georgian Interior Ministry said Mézes was in the country “without legal grounds” and had exceeded the permitted period of stay, invoking a provision of the aliens’ law that allows detention where there is a risk of absconding. His lawyer maintained that his client’s stay was lawful. Mézes ultimately left the country at his own expense, escorted to the airport by migration officials.
Mézes leaves Georgia – at his own expense:
The case is notable not least because Mézes is no ordinary Hungarian correspondent based in Georgia: he has been an outspoken critic of Georgian Dream. For Magyar Hang, reporting from Tbilisi, he wrote repeatedly on the so-called “foreign agents” law – a near word‑for‑word translation of the Russian model – and on the suffocation of civil society and independent media, the blocking of voting rights for the diaspora (some one million of Georgia’s five million citizens, whose remittances underpin the economy), the imprisonment of opposition politicians and critical journalists, and the near‑constant street protests. He also reported for Magyar Hang that Prime Ministers Orbán and Fico were obstructing EU moves towards targeted sanctions against Georgian political leaders.
On the 612th day of protests following the 2024 election, he published these photographs last Saturday:
Beaten in Tbilisi – and he told Orbán what he thought
In October 2024, during Viktor Orbán’s visit to Tbilisi, Mézes shouted at the Hungarian Prime Minister in Hungarian that he had come to legitimise “stolen elections”, and asked whether he was proud that Georgian Dream was copying Fidesz. Orbán, alone among EU leaders, congratulated the victors almost immediately after the poll, while the rest of the EU (save Slovakia), the European Parliament, the Georgian President and the opposition all rejected the result. Mézes’s situation deteriorated further in September 2025: while working as a journalist at an anti-government demonstration, he was attacked by Georgian Dream activists outside the party headquarters. He was beaten, required stitches to his face and sustained hand injuries; Georgian authorities later formally recognised him as a victim.
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In this post, featuring a photograph with Péter Magyar, he informed his Georgian followers that Péter Magyar would be the next Prime Minister:
A pro‑Russian turn
Although the Caucasian country was at war with Russia in 2008 over South Ossetia and Abkhazia – territories occupied by Moscow and subsequently recognised as independent states – the Georgian Dream party has lately been cultivating conspicuously pragmatic relations with Putin’s Russia. The “foreign agents” law, passed in 2024 on the Russian model, targeted critical NGOs and media outlets; in November 2024 the government announced it would not commence EU accession talks until 2028. Tbilisi has not joined sanctions against Russia and continues to trade with Moscow, even though diplomatic relations have never been restored since the 2008 war.
