A week after Kyrgyzstan, Georgia passed a law on the financing of political organizations from abroad. Small demonstrations took place for three days in front of the Parliament, culminating in a rally of more than 10,000 people. The protesters referred to the bill as the “Putin Law” because they said it was based on a law in force in Russia. The government responded by distributing copies of its U.S. equivalent, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which is in force… since 1938.
During the debate, MP Aleko Elissachvili jumped onto the podium to punch rapporteur Mamuka Mdinaradze in the face. Aleko Elissachvili is a print and radio journalist. He fought in Ukraine against Russia [1] as part of the “International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine”. According to him, forcing newspapers financed by more than 20% from abroad to tell their readers would be an attack on freedom of expression.
There are many links between Georgians and Ukrainian “integral nationalists”. For example, former pro-US president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili (who had increased the incarceration of opponents) went into exile in 2013 and gave up Georgian citizenship to acquire Ukrainian citizenship in 2015. Under pressure from the “integral nationalists”, he was then appointed governor of the Odessa Oblast. He was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship by President Petro Poroshenko and thus found himself stateless, before being restored to his Ukrainian nationality by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
At the same time, his Minister of the Interior, Eka Zguladze, also became Minister of the Interior in Ukraine. She was dismissed at the same time as him. During this period, she married Raphaël Glucksmann, future chairman of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Foreign Interference. The latter is the son of the anti-communist philosopher and contributor to the Freedom House news agency, André Glucksmann (Freedom House was an extension of the CIA’s effort for anti-communist left-wing publications [2]).
This is the editorial from our paywalled “Voltaire, international newsletter”, n°84. For more information, do not hesitate to subscribe: 150€ per year or 15€ per month.
[1] «დეპუტატი ალეკო ელისაშვილი: უკრაინაში ვარ, მოხალისე მებრძოლთა უცხოურ ლეგიონში», ნანა კვაჭაძე, 13.03.2022.