OC Insider

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Marking the anniversary of Georgian protests (and accelerated authoritarianism)

•3 min read

A year has passed since Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party halted the country’s bid for EU membership — a move that immediately sparked a massive, nationwide protest movement that, despite relentless state pressure and shrinking in size, continues to this day. Honestly speaking, without any theatrics: I can’t really believe I’m writing this. Partly because it’s hard to realise that such a long, heavy year has gone by so quickly. And second, it’s astonishing to see how the country has changed

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Brussels’ deadlock: EU diplomats on Georgia’s uncertain future

by Tamar Shvelidze

•3 min read

Brussels’ deadlock: EU diplomats on Georgia’s uncertain future In early November, as the EU released its latest enlargement report — describing Georgia as ‘a candidate country on paper only’ — I travelled to Brussels with several other journalists from Georgian online media platforms. During the five-day press trip, organised by the EU Delegation to Georgia, we met with EU officials and diplomats from member states and had a chance to ask them questions about how they see the next steps with G

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Tucker Carlson brings the ‘war on Christianity’ to the Caucasus

by Nate Ostiller

•3 min read

There is so much wrong with Tucker Carlson’s recent episode on Armenia — featuring Narek Kareptyan, the nephew of jailed Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan and his amoral, opportunistic lawyer Robert Amsterdam — that it is hard to know where to begin. I think part of the reason I’m writing this newsletter is to put my thoughts on paper about the literal torrent of misinformation and false narratives contained in the episode (and to spare my coworkers, who are probably tired of hearing me

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Ivanishvili’s ‘Georgian Dream’ of a populist right-wing Europe

by Robin Fabbro

•1 min read

When the European Council presented their latest enlargement report on Tuesday, no one was surprised by what was said about Georgia. EU enlargement chief Marta Kos called it ‘the worst enlargement report for any candidate country ever’. The response from the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, was also fairly typical. He accused the Brussels deep state/global war party of orchestrating a coup attempt, of financing radicalism, of blackmail — all par for the course. He also a

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Five years of loneliness

by Elizaveta Chukharova

•2 min read

It must be nice to come home when you live in another city. Your family welcomes you, sets the table — you bring them gifts. Then you visit friends, and walk along the familiar streets from your childhood, breathing in the scent of freshly fallen leaves. You drink tea or wine together and remember what it was like to be teenagers. Unfortunately, such a feeling is unknown to me. I left Vladikavkaz in 2020 and haven’t been home since. Meeting my loved ones has become a kind of quest — I can’t go

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The OSCE’s tone-deaf visit to Azerbaijan

by Yousef Bardouka

•2 min read

Last week, Elina Valtonen, the OSCE Chair-in-office and Finnish Foreign Minister, attended a demonstration in central Tbilisi as a show of support for the long-running protest movement against the Georgian Dream government’s anti-Western trajectory. While not the first EU diplomat to have attended a protest in Tbilisi, her attendance drove the government to say that it had cancelled her meeting with Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze — or so it seemed. Valtonen quickly hit back, saying that she

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As Azerbaijan and Russia apparently make up, have we learned anything?

by Nate Ostiller

•2 min read

After almost a year of plummeting relations, Azerbaijan and Russia seem like they have ended their very public beef. At a meeting in Dushanbe earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised, on camera, to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for the deadly Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) plane crash in December 2024 — the incident that had set off the chain of escalating tit-for-tat actions between Moscow and Baku. In a delicately-worded admission of guilt, Putin acknowledged that the