GEORGIA: Foreign Funding Restrictions & more – 5th Feb 2026

Gamarjobat from Gracia! This is the Rorshok Georgia Update from the 5th of February twenty twenty-six. A quick summary of what's going down in Georgia.

Kicking off this episode, on Thursday, the 29th, the Georgian Dream or the Kotsebi introduced seven new bills to Parliament that would further restrict how non-profits and individuals receive and use foreign funding.

If these bills are passed, any money received from abroad, be it from organizations or individuals, used to influence public policy, will be seen as a grant. So, recipients will have to get official government permission before they spend this money on any political activity. Otherwise, they will face up to six years in prison.

In another major change, one of the proposed bills will also ban salaried employees of foreign-funded NGOs from joining a political party for eight years.

As soon as news surfaced that the Kotsebi wanted to ban people working in the NGO sector from entering politics, many media organizations and individuals were quick to point out the irony. Current Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and Speaker Shalva Papuashvili were themselves heavily involved with NGOs and foreign grants before moving into politics.

Public records and their own official biographies show that Papuashvili spent seventeen years at the German Agency for International Cooperation, while Kobakhidze’s career includes roles at USAID and the UN Development Programme, as well as a position on an expert committee for the Open Society Foundations. Despite these clearly documented facts, Papuashvili told reporters that neither he nor the Prime Minister ever worked for an NGO.

And yet another restriction was proposed in the Kotsebi Parliament. On Tuesday, the 3rd, during a parliamentary session, Member of Parliament Levan Machavariani asked whether the state should impose sanctions on groups that refuse to recognize the government's legitimacy.

The head of the Legal Affairs Committee says he is ready to draft specific criminal charges against any individual who publicly urges others to boycott the laws or reject the government’s legitimacy. This proposal directly targets people who still protest the twenty twenty-four parliamentary election results. For now, the committee is waiting to see if the rest of Parliament supports the idea.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the 29th, Education Minister Givi Mikanadze announced that the government will merge Tbilisi State University and the Georgian Technical University. The government is fast-tracking this move as part of a major education reform to consolidate resources.

Mikanadze says the merger will improve international rankings, but the sudden announcement sparked immediate backlash. Critics say the reform allows the government to increase its control over universities and push out professors who do not support the ruling party.

Spontaneous protest marches soon followed, with students and professors taking to the streets of Tbilisi to demand autonomy for their institutions and an end to the reorganization.

In other news, on Wednesday, the 4th, Public Defender Levan Ioseliani visited Rustavi Prison and found that many high-profile political detainees live in near-total isolation. He says the government currently denies these individuals any contact with the outside world, including their own families. This restriction affects opposition leader Levan Khabeishvili, former Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili, and former security chief Grigol Liluashvili, among others.

Prosecutors use special orders to block these prisoners from making calls or seeing anyone except their lawyers. Ioseliani says this policy even prevents parents from seeing their children.

Next up. On the same day, twenty-four member states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) activated a rare investigation tool called the Moscow Mechanism to look into human rights violations in Georgia. This move creates an independent mission of experts to document attacks on civil society, media restrictions, and the use of the justice system to suppress political opposition.

The group of countries, including Germany, the UK, and Canada, says their concerns about the government’s actions have only grown since late twenty twenty-four. This investigation can proceed even without official permission from the Georgian government.

The experts will now gather facts and provide recommendations on how to address the documented harassment of journalists, activists, and opposition politicians.

In the digital arena, on Sunday, the 1st, a sharp exchange broke out on Twitter between Michael Gahler, a German diplomat and long-standing member of the European Parliament, and Georgian officials.

Gahler, who serves as the foreign policy spokesperson for the European People’s Party, shared a post from ex-Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili criticizing new restrictive laws, called Bidzina Ivanishvili and Irakli Kobakhidze Moscow Creatures, and said they should leave Georgia so the vast majority of Georgians can continue moving toward a European future instead of a Soviet one.

Papuashvili fired back, accusing Gahler of using dehumanizing language, demanding that he delete the post and issue an official apology for the insult.

Several weeks ago, we covered the news that the US seized a Russian-flagged tanker carrying sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. Back then, there were unconfirmed rumors that part of the crew and its captain were Georgian citizens. This was later confirmed.

On Sunday, the 1st, the US Embassy in London confirmed to the BBC that while most of the crew will be returned home, the captain of the ship, Avtandil Kalandadze, will face trial in the US.

Shifting gears, on Wednesday, the 28th, workers at the Azoti chemical plant in Rustavi, eastern Georgia, went on strike to demand a monthly pay increase of 300 Lari, which is just over 100 dollars. Employees rejected a 4% salary increase offered by the administration, saying the current pay doesn’t keep up with rising consumer prices and their heavy workload. Management said the strike is illegal and threatened criminal charges.

All production at the massive plant has stopped, including the oxygen facility that supplies local hospitals. The strikers say they will continue their protest until the administration agrees to negotiate fairly.

In crime news, on Thursday, the 29th, police arrested a man who shot at a Police building in Kutaisi, western Georgia. The person shot the building from his car using a hunting rifle, damaging the building facade, but not injuring anyone inside. His motive remains unknown, and he faces up to seven years in prison.

More on crime, as on Friday, the 30th, the Anti-Corruption Agency announced it had arrested twenty-one people across Georgia for various corruption-related crimes.

In three instances, suspects helped men avoid military service by creating fake medical diagnoses. In another case, four doctors issued false disability certificates to over three hundred people so they could collect disability pensions. The rest of the cases involved businesspeople and local officials stealing thousands of lari from the state through fraudulent road and football field renovation projects.

Unlike previous high-level corruption cases, the agency gave no names this time.

And to wrap up this episode, in a new opinion piece for OC-Media titled “Georgia’s regime has given critics a choice: prison or exile,” Davit Zedelashvili analyzes how recent changes to the Law on Grants and the Criminal Code signal a shift toward mass repression. He says the government is using these broad legal amendments to create red lines that criminalize almost any independent work. Zedelashvili writes that even an academic or a programmer could face six years in prison if the state decides their foreign pay aims to influence policy. Zedelashvili says the regime does not need to jail everyone to win, but only needs a few high-profile cases to create a chilling effect. This forces critics to choose between complete silence in prison or a life in exile.

Check out the full piece in English with the link in the show notes.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Nakhvamdis!