Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze is standing firm in the face of mounting opposition to a controversial law on “foreign agents” that has plunged the country into a political crisis. Despite facing one of the largest protests since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Kobakhidze vowed to push ahead with the bill, which requires organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as agents of foreign influence or face fines.
The opposition has called for an all-night protest outside parliament to block lawmakers from entering the building for the bill’s third reading. Critics, including Western countries and Georgia’s opposition, have condemned the law as authoritarian and Russian-inspired, drawing parallels to Russia’s own “foreign agent” legislation used to suppress dissent.
The dispute over the bill has broader implications for Georgia’s foreign policy direction, with the EU warning that it could jeopardize the country’s integration with the bloc. Georgian Dream’s founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, argues that the law is necessary to protect Georgian sovereignty against Western interference.
Despite the government’s attempts to downplay the scale of the protests, with estimates ranging from 18,000 to hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, the public outcry against the bill shows no signs of abating. As tensions escalate, the future of Georgia’s relationship with the West and Russia hangs in the balance.