JRL NEWSWATCH: “Rattled by Ukraine war, Georgia wrestles with tighter societal controls” – Christian Science Monitor
“As its huge neighbor wages war in Ukraine, Georgia is finding its own society polarizing between those who distrust Russia and those who want to avoid entanglement in the West’s anti-Kremlin efforts.”
“The cobbled streets of Tbilisi … have seen a lot of political turmoil since the fall of the USSR three decades ago. But the current round of pitched battles between protesters and riot police near the country’s parliament, on picturesque Rustaveli Avenue, is the sharpest confrontation in many years between Georgia’s often fiery pro-Western opposition and the more conservative stability-oriented government, which currently holds a comfortable majority in parliament. The most direct cause of the unrest is government-authored legislation that would require politically active civil-society groups and media that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as ‘foreign agents.’ That would subject them to curbs very similar to those that have been in effect in Russia for around a decade. …”