Without a seat in Parliament and having left the NF, Gubaz Sanikidze became an unaffiliated political commentator, often appearing on media to criticize the government, while rejecting any cooperation with UNM, at the time the largest opposition party. On 11 June 2019, he became a co-founder of Victorious Georgia, a new political party set up by former controversial Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili, with the stated goal of continuing reforms that it claimed had been abandoned by Georgian Dream. Following Okruashvili's arrest a week later as one of the leaders of an anti-Russian protest that tried to enter the Parliament building, Sanikidze called him a political prisoner and stated that "[Bidzina] Ivanishvili has a mental disorder and takes direct orders from Vladimir Putin."
