The Daily Beat: 10 June
The ruling Georgian Dream party is making further changes to the Law on Grants to exempt certain foreign educational grants from needing prior government approval, while also expanding the requirement for official consent to include “technical assistance” and “knowledge-sharing.” The new grant law, along with two foreign agents laws, are key tools in the Georgian Dream’s crackdown on civil society and media organizations.
Tamar Taliashvili, a former Georgian Dream lawmaker who has served as Georgia’s permanent representative to the Council of Europe, has been named as Georgia’s next ambassador to the United States. Taliashvili will succeed Davit Zalkaliani, who resigned in December 2024 after the U.S. suspended its strategic partnership with Georgia. The ambassadorial position has been vacant for seven months.
Tamar Taliashvili has been succeeded by Khatia Tsilosani, a former lawmaker from the Georgian Dream party, who has been appointed as Georgia’s permanent representative to the Council of Europe. Tsilosani previously served as the deputy agriculture minister from 2019 to 2020 and has held other key positions within the ministry since 2017. The appointment comes amid the deterioration of the Georgian ruling party’s relations with the CoE Parliamentary Assembly.
Notorious Zviad Kharazishvili is no longer the head of the Interior Ministry’s Special Tasks Department amid a broader reshuffle within the ministry. Kharazishvili has been sanctioned by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Baltic States, and the Czech Republic over his role in serious human rights abuses during the protests.
The Russian state-controlled media outlet TASS reported on June 10 that a Russian worker at the Sokhumi Airport in occupied Abkhazia was detained on suspicion of espionage for Ukrainian military intelligence. TASS report cited the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) as saying that the transfer of information to Kyiv could have been used for a terrorist attack, attaching a video of the alleged suspect confessing to a plot.