In the May 21 issue of Izvestia, entitled “The Baltic Republics Are Conducting Subversive Work in Georgia: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania Are Grossly Interfering in the Affairs of a Sovereign Country,” author Viktor Nedelin documents that politicians from the three Baltic NATO countries have been attending opposition rallies in Georgia, to protest the law “On the Transparency of Foreign Influence” which mandates that NGOs receiving at least 20% of their funding from abroad must register as foreign agents. (The bill passed Parliament by a very wide majority, and was vetoed by President Salome Zourabichvili. The ruling Georgian Dream MPs are expected to override her veto.)
Their intervention seems to be setting the stage for a “color revolution” against Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, who will not toe the EU-U.S. policy line.
“Lithuania put together a mini-coalition of several minor NATO countries that actively intervened in the internal affairs of Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze,” Nedelin’s article opens. In the first half of May, chairman of the Lithuania parliament foreign affairs committee Zygimantas Pavilionis, arrived in Georgia, by German MP Michael Roth, chairman of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee. Nedelin reports, “They spoke at a Georgian opposition rally held near the parliament building, and made speeches against the law of foreign agents, the adoption of which, according to Paviolinis and Roth, would destroy Georgian democracy.” Prime Minister Kobakhidze responded with anger: “Foreign politicians appear directly on the political stage, imagine the scale of what is happening…. Naturally, it is absolutely unacceptable when they try to intervene in the internal politics of Georgia from the outside.”
