The Daily Beat: 31 July

Lasha Bekauri, 24, successfully defended his Olympic title after defeating Japan’s Murao Sanshiro in the men’s 90kg judo at the Olympic Games, giving the country its first gold medal from Paris. Bekauri is now a two-time Olympic champion. He also won the gold medal in the men’s 90 kg event at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.

According to the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statement, posted on X by DC correspondent Alex Raufoglu, the United States is pausing more than USD 95 million in assistance “that directly benefits the Government of Georgia.”

In a letter addressed to the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken,leaders of the Helsinki Commission called on the Biden administration to sanction former Prime Minister and the founder of the Georgian Dream party, currently the honorary chair of the ruling party, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Georgian elites “are turning their backs on a path to the EU and NATO,” Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Jim O’Brien said at the U.S Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on “The Future of Europe.” At the committee hearing, O’Brien testified about the U.S.’s assistance to Europe, including the situation in Georgia, the South Caucasus, and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Responding to the question regarding the implementation of the Foreign Agents legislation in Georgia during the July 30 briefing at the State Department, the Principal Deputy Spokesman of the U.S. State Department Vedant Patel said that “the concerns that we had about this legislation continue to be very real and they continue to be very serious.”

The Data of the Day

According to the rapid estimates released by the National Statistics Office, Georgia’s estimated real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate amounted to 7.5% for June 2024 compared to the corresponding period of the previous year. Geostat also suggests that the average real GDP growth for January- June 2024 equaled 9%.