Georgia has been warned by the US not to become an adversary of the west by falling back in line with Moscow, as its parliament defied mass street protests to pass a “Kremlin-inspired” law.
Washington’s assistant secretary of state, Jim O’Brien, spoke of his fears that the passing by Georgia’s parliament of a “foreign agents” bill on Tuesday could be yet another “turning point” in the former Soviet state’s troubled history.
In comments that appeared to signal a conviction in the US that the Georgian government was once again aligning with Russia, O’Brien suggested funding could soon be pulled.
Billions of dollars had been spent by the US on rebuilding Georgia after the fall of the Soviet Union and hundreds of millions more were planned for the country’s economy and military, he said.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Outside the parliament building, masked riot police used teargas in a vain attempt to disperse one of the largest protests seen so far while inside MPs brawled over the country’s future.
Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, claimed on Monday that the country was being victimised by a US-led “global party of war”, in language that had echoes that of that used by the Kremlin over the west’s aid to Ukraine.
He went on to claim that the comments suggested that the prime minister had put the “individual interests” of one billionaire over Georgia’s constitutional commitment to a close working relationship with Nato, the western military alliance.
The violence spread into the chamber, with a dozen MPs fighting and one MP, from the governing Georgian Dream party, being held back by security guards as he violently lurched at the chair of the main opposition, Levan Khabeishvili.
The police were initially successful in clearing the crowds from Rustaveli Avenue in front of the imposing parliament building but the officers soon retreated to whistles and jeers as the demonstration grew in the early evening.
Georgian Dream is accused of unwinding the progress made since the 2003 rose revolution, when a non-violent movement brought an end to an administration that was Soviet in style and corrupt in practice.
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