Key events from yesterday:
- Mikheil Kavelashvili was inaugurated as Georgia’s sixth president in a disputed ceremony at parliament. No foreign diplomats attended the inauguration.
- Salome Zourabichvili declared her intentions to leave Orbeliani Palace, the presidential seat, but to remain as the only ‘legitimate’ government representative.
- Following Kavelashvili’s inauguration, a number of Western leaders emphasised that Zourabichvili was the ‘only legitimate representative of Georgia’.
- The Interior Ministry briefly detained six people protesting against the government and Kavelashvili on Rustaveli Avenue.
- Irakli Shaishmelashvili, a former senior official in the Special Tasks Department who resigned on 4 December following the government crackdown on street demonstrations, told Bild.de the Georgian police ‘are just a tool from Moscow’.
