On December 17, an 8-kilometer section of the Samtredia-Grigoleti expressway was opened in Georgia on the Lanchkhuti-Lesa section. The new segment begins in Lanchkhuti and ends in the village of Lesa, allowing transit traffic to move from the village of Japana to Lesa, bypassing the city of Lanchkhuti, and in the opposite direction.
The Samtredia-Grigoleti highway was originally scheduled for completion by 2020, but the project has faced protracted delays. The road is divided into four lots, and by December 2025, only two of them are fully open: Japana-Lanchkhuti and Khadjalia-Supsa. The Samtredia-Japana and Lanchkhuti-Khadjalia lots remain unfinished, although the Lanchkhuti-Lesa section was put into operation today on the latter.
Construction was complicated by serious problems with contractors and infrastructure accidents. For example, in 2023, a bridge over the Rioni River collapsed on the Samtredia-Japana section, and previously it was necessary to allocate tens of millions of lari from the budget. The Georgian authorities won international arbitration proceedings with contractors, recovering significant amounts, but the completion of the entire highway, including the connection to the Kobuleti bypass road, remains a matter for the future.
