Brussels Is Up To Color Revolutions Again, This time in Georgia

The Parliament of Georgia adopted May 14 the “Transparency of Foreign Influence Act” which requires non governmental organizations (NGOs) receiving over 20% of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents. Those NGOs that don’t register will be fined. President Salome Zourabichvili, who is very much pro EU and pro NATO, vetoed the bill, but her veto will most likely be overridden by the Parliament, which had passed it with 84 yeas to 30 nays.

For months before the vote, and afterwards, there have been big demonstrations in the streets of Tblisi against the measure, presumably organized by those same organizations that don’t want to disclose the source of their funding. Both the United States and the European Union issued serious threats of reprisals in the event the act were passed, in the form of sanctions against MPs from Washington, while Brussels (Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell) warned that it would “negatively impact” Georgia’s path to membership in the EU.

Their protests ring highly hypocritical, given the laws already in force and/or planned in the United States and Europe. In fact, the Georgian act is modeled on the “Foreign Agents Registration Act” in force in the U.S., which has not stopped officials of the Biden Administration from calling it a “threat to democracy” and “the Russian law”.

As for the EU, it’s been on a veritable banning spree with regard to Russia. As part of the 14th package of sanctions just adopted, Brussels will ban four more Russian media outlets: Voice of Europe, RIA Novosti, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, that will thus join the ranks of RT and Sputnik. In announcing the list, EU Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová said the sanctions package will also include a ban “on Russian funding of EU media, NGOs and political parties”. The blatant interference into Georgia’s policies indicates an escalation of the efforts to stir up a new “color revolution” in the country.

Who is Salome Zourabichvili? Just a word on the credentials of Georgia’s current president. Born in Paris, she served in the diplomatic service of France for three decades, including her last official posting, in 2003-2004, as France’s ambassador to Georgia (during the country’s first color revolution). She then became the Foreign Minister of Georgia in 2004, in the government of Mikheil Saakashvili, before being fired. Her comeback came in 2018 with her election to the presidency.

Another revealing detail: she was trained at Columbia University in 1972/3 by none other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, specifically in the areas of Soviet politics and Cold War diplomacy.