A Tale of Georgia’s Friends and Foes

By Mikhail Borkounov

The Georgian Law on Registration of Foreign Agents, which is due to come into force on May 31, will recognize any natural person or legal entity receiving foreign funding and participating in politics in the interests of a foreign principal as a foreign agent and impose a penalty of up to 5 years of imprisonment for non-compliance. It should be noted that the law has been previously applied to NGOs and media outlets only.

Speaking at a press conference on May 21, Georgian PM Irakli Kobakhidze emphasized the potential of the new law  to ensure the country’s sovereignty and independence as well as its power to secure the republic’s national interests. It’s noteworthy that apart from a few minor complaints voiced on social networks, the tightening of the legislation hasn’t met much resistance. The opposing forces seem to have fallen into a state of groggy exhaustion, exerting themselves to the utmost to make one final desperate cry of condemnation against Zourabichvili who they blame for the failure to defeat the Georgian Dreamers.

As if by the wave of Trump’s magic wand, the gush of financial flows from USAID* and NED* has been reduced to a trickle, providing little, if any incentive for anyone to protest. Moreover, the new Foreign Agents Law turns any form of criticism into a kind of political suicide attempt, simply because it’s nothing but a copycat of the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). In any case, there’s been no response similar to what we observed in 2023 and 2024 regarding the law on Transparency of Foreign Influence which ignited a storm of protests, the blocking of the parliament building, fights with the police and other forms of public disorder.  

A response from the West didn’t take long to arrive. On May 5, the House of Representatives of the US Congress passed a bill abbreviated as the MEGABARI Act (Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience and Independence Act). The MEGABARI Act, despite its seemingly positive connotation, for “megabari” translates as “friend” in the Georgian language is in fact highly hostile as it provides for the imposition of sanctions and visa restrictions on the Georgian authorities for “abandoning democracy,” establishing cordial relations with China, Russia and Iran, and “slowing down the process of Euro-Atlantic integration.” The Senate must consider the law by June 3 and, if approved, the Act will then land on Trump’s desk for signing.

Quite predictably, the initiative has been met with widespread condemnation from the Georgian authorities. In particular, Kobakhidze responded with a letter to Trump and Vance in which, apart from emphasizing the hostile nature of the Act in relation to Georgia and its government, he noted that the views of the Georgian Dream and those held by the US presidential administration were in many ways the same, including the stance on such sensitive issues as LGBT** propaganda, “deep state” criminality as well as the activity of USAID* and NED*. One of the excerpts reads as follows:

”The sanctions against Georgian officials, who have prevented the attempted revolution and violence plotted by the Biden administration and funded by USAID*, make no sense to us.”

Georgian Dream Secretary General Kakha Kaladze strongly criticized the initiators of the Act, namely Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen, by noting that:

”Both Shaheen and Risch are known to have made a number of anti-Georgian statements in recent years. These people are literally fighting against Georgia’s statehood, they are literally attempting to carry out a coup, spark confrontation and revolution. They are trying to overthrow the Georgian authorities and bring in the forces they desire.”

Deputy Speaker of the Georgian Parliament Gia Volski referred to Risch and Shaheen as “Mikhail Saakashvili’s educators and the defenders of his regime.” The whole thing reached its climax on May 14 when Georgian MPs openly accused the American lawmakers of lying, pointing out that the Act was “technically imperfect, containing loads of factual errors and logical contradictions” and suggesting that the initiative had been “brought about by the “deep state’s” hostile attitude towards Georgia.”

”Instead of acting independently of the “deep state” and asking the new US administration to lift the unfair sanctions imposed by the previous administration, the US Congress is now seeking the introduction of new measures,”
- they said.

These anti-Georgian legislative initiatives have been strongly condemned in the US itself, which is evidenced by an article published in The American Conservative magazine on April 24 by Anatol Lieven and Artin DerSimonian, who characterized the minds behind the Act as “reckless” and “wickedly irresponsible”. Commenting on the significance of economic ties between Georgia and Russia, the columnists placed a particular emphasis on the fact that the adoption of the MEGABARI Act will “have profoundly negative effects on American (and likely European) relations with Georgia”, may further “alienate the Georgian government from the US and limit America’s ability to seriously influence local developments.”

”Part of the risk of such legislation is that by effectively choosing sides in internal Georgian political processes and encouraging sanctions on individuals with broad justifications, the US will inadvertently incentivize the Georgian Dream to pursue deeper relations with other, non-Western partners.”

In short, the authors believe that “if the US Senate wants to avoid another tragic crisis like Ukraine along Russia’s periphery, it needs to stop encouraging Moscow’s neighbors into unnecessarily confrontational relationships with Russia.”

Yet, it’s important to bear in mind the fact that both Lieven and DerSimonian are employed at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Backed by Soros-run structures, the aforementioned organization has always been committed to putting spokes into the wheel of the Georgian Dream party. Therefore there’s something oxymoronic about such anti-Soros statements.

What remains to be seen is how the Trump administration with supposedly little interest in the Georgian agenda will respond to these legislative initiatives. To what extent the US president will prove himself committed to Monroe’s ideology is something we are expecting to find out very, very soon.

Mikhail Borkounov, VneshVrag

*The activity of the organization is considered undesirable in the RF
** The LGBT movement is recognized as extremist and banned in the RF

The photo below (obtained from the public domain) shows the “friendly” tandem of Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen - the two “great” minds behind the MEGABARI Act

Never before has the “Friends vs. Foes” dilemma preoccupied the minds of the Georgian authorities to the extent it does now. The positively unfriendly MEGABARI Act initiated in response to the Georgian law on Registration of Foreign Agents has not passed unnoticed by the ExternalEnemy TG-Channel.