GEORGIA: Ivanishvili Sanctioned & more – 31st Dec 2024

Gamarjobat from Gracia! This is the Rorshok Georgia Update from the 31st of December twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Georgia.

On Friday, the 27th, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder and honorary chairman of the Georgian Dream or the Kotsebi.

The U.S. State Department accused Ivanishvili of pushing Russian interests, moving Georgia away from its European and Atlantic goals, which goes against the country’s constitution. Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, said Ivanishvili’s actions hurt democratic institutions and human rights in Georgia.

As a result, Ivanishvili was added to the U.S. Treasury’s list of Specially Designated Nationals, freezing any assets he has in the U.S. and blocking U.S. citizens from doing business with him.

On Sunday, the 29th, while the illegitimate president Mikheil Kavelashvili, backed by the ruling party, was taking an oath, President Salome Zourabishvili addressed the crowd outside the presidential palace. She had not revealed whether she would stay in the palace or leave till that day. The ruling party had threatened to jail her if she refused to leave.

In her speech, Zourabishvili stated that her legitimacy came from the public, not the building. She decided to leave on her own terms, joining the demonstrators on the streets to continue the fight for new elections and the release of protesters. She invited everyone to celebrate the new year with her on Rustaveli Avenue, where protesters had gathered daily for the past month.

Many Georgians and European politicians consider her the legitimate president.

After his inauguration, the Kotsebi’s president quickly signed laws aimed at suppressing protests by significantly increasing fines for various actions.

Covering faces with masks or other methods during demonstrations is now prohibited and results in a fine of 2,000 Lari, which is $700 US dollars. Fines for damaging the appearance of municipal areas or vandalism used to be just fifty lari or seventeen dollars, now they range from 1,000 to 3,000 Lari, which is from $350 to $1,000 dollars.

Fines for violating other rules of gatherings and demonstrations have increased from 500 Lari which is $170 dollars to 5,000 Lari, which is $1,700 dollars. Organizers face fines up to 15,000 Lari, which is over $5,000.

The fines are incredibly disproportionate to the Georgians’ average monthly income of 1,900 Lari, which is less than 700 dollars.

The day after Kotsebi’s President Kavelashvili signed the laws, demonstrators in Zugdidi, a city in western Georgia, protested them by lighting flares and wearing balaclavas. Both actions are now prohibited during demonstrations. The police asked three participants to remove their balaclavas, but the demonstrators responded that Kavelashvili was not a legitimate president so the laws he signed had no authority. At least one participant was charged with breaking the law, and it remains to be seen whether the court will impose a hefty fine or just issue a warning.

On the subject of two presidents and legitimacy… An IPM Market Intelligence Caucasus conducted a nationwide phone survey on Tuesday the 24th and Wednesday the 25th with 800 respondents over eighteen. When asked who they considered the country's president, 46% named Zourabichvili, 22% chose Kavelashvili, 16% said neither, and 16% didn't know or refused to answer. Regarding the release of all the individuals arrested during the protests, 72% supported immediate release, 17% opposed, and 11% did not know or refused to answer.

Next up, on Saturday, the 28th, TV channel PIRVELI aired an interview with Colonel Irakli Shaishmelashvili, the head of the Operational Planning Department of the Special Tasks Department, who resigned during the brutal crackdown on demonstrators. He said that the police's treatment of protesters was a watershed moment for him. He found it morally and emotionally unbearable, leading him to request to leave due to personal reasons.

Shaishmelashvili said he received threats, including towards his children, and that the use of force during protests was aimed at instilling maximum fear. He also criticized the government's lack of accountability, stating that no one would be held responsible for police violence. He mentioned the involvement of undercover government agents in protests, aiming to demonize protesters. He left the country with his family two days before the interview was aired.

It seems that the governments of Georgia and the breakaway region of South Ossetia, located forty kilometers north of Tbilisi, have more in common than expected. On Thursday, the 26th, the Ossetian Ministry of Internal Affairs proposed a law to parliament aimed at banning LGBTQ propaganda. A similar law was passed in Georgia during the summer.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, some citizens of South Ossetia were using a social media platform banned in Russia, that allows LGBTQ people to connect. The ministry also said that individuals were publishing photos of citizens on these networks to falsely accuse them of being part of the LGBTQ community.

Since we mentioned Russia, on Monday, the 30th, in an interview with Russian state media TASS, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that the Georgian people and their government are pursuing a sovereign policy and do not want to become pawns of the West. According to him, the US and the EU are giving Georgia an ultimatum: the country has to be with or against Russia. Lavrov also stated that the question about the legitimacy of the parliamentary elections is hypocritical, as it only arises because Washington and Brussels did not like the outcome.

It seems like the prospect of the Kotsebi to reset the Georgian-American relationship after the Inauguration of Donald Trump is getting dimmer and dimmer. Joe Wilson, the Republican U.S. Representative, became the chief critic of the Kotsebi on Twitter, calling for even tougher sanctions against what he called the pro-Iranian and pro-Chinese party.

Also, Trump's nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense, Stephen Feinberg, might be another nail in the coffin. Feinberg is the founder and co-director of Cerberus Capital Management, which in twenty nineteen planned to participate in the development of the deep-water port of strategic importance in Anaklia, located on the Black Sea coast of western Georgia. However, the Kotsebi terminated the investment agreement and later chose to go with a Chinese company instead. It remains to be seen if Feinberg still holds a grudge, but this certainly does not look good for the Kotsebi.

In some tragic news, on Tuesday the 31st, a traffic collision in Bolnisi, a city in southeastern Georgia primarily populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis, led to a clash between the local population and the police. The accident occurred when an allegedly drunk driver hit two underage boys, killing them. Locals quickly gathered to find the perpetrator. They overturned his car and then flipped the ambulance where the driver had tried to hide. As a result of the clash, eight locals and several law enforcement officers were hospitalized.

On Monday, the 30th, Avtandil Kuchava, one of the demonstrators beaten by police during a brutal crackdown on pro-European protests, posted on Facebook that he lost thousands in cryptocurrency after officers stole his phone, which contained a temporary crypto wallet. Due to the concussion and broken collarbone from the assault, he couldn’t perform the time-sensitive recovery process. Initially, he offered to pay double the phone’s value and 30% of his crypto to get it back. However, Kuchava later discovered that the police had wiped his iCloud, making it permanently impossible to access his crypto wallet.

Meanwhile, Lasha Beqauri, a two-time Olympic judo champion, caused a stir after posting a video on Instagram driving in Tbilisi while petting a lion cub sitting beside him. Even though the video gained over 240,000 likes, it faced strong criticism. Owning an endangered wild animal is illegal. The backlash led Beqauri to give the cub to the Tbilisi zoo for care. It’s unclear if Beqauri or the person who gave him the cub will face charges. In Georgia, it is illegal to trade endangered species listed in the CITES convention and punishable by two to four years in prison.

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

Before leaving we want to wish you a happy and exciting twenty twenty-five! Thank you for sticking with us, sharing the podcast, and being such an amazing part of our community. We’ll be here as long as you’re enjoying the episodes, so if you have any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions on how we can get better, don’t hesitate to reach out—shoot us an email at info@rorshok.com. We’d love to hear from you!

Nakhvamdis!