In Georgia’s 2012 election, then-President Mikheil Saakashvili’s pro-Western party was defeated by Georgian Dream, a party led by the Russian-backed oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili. Though widely hailed at the time as a democratic triumph, astute observers warned against celebrating. One such observer was Georgia’s former economy minister, the late Kakha Bendukidze, a businessman and philanthropist who […]

Georgia's Oct. 26 parliamentary election presented a clear geopolitical choice for the country’s voters, but criticism is mounting that the ruling regime stole the vote. After years of vacillating between the West and Russia and paying lip service to European integration, the country's ruling Georgian Dream party began to mimic the Kremlin’s playbook, tarnishing the […]

Russia has stolen more than 180,000 tons of Ukrainian grain through the port of the occupied city of Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast alone, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said at a government meeting on Oct. 8. Already by mid-2023, Russia is believed to have stolen up to 6 million metric tons of grain harvested in occupied […]

Some historical artifacts stolen by Russia in Ukraine have emerged on global black markets, Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin said in an interview with the Voice of America on Oct. 4. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by large-scale looting of cultural heritage in the occupied territories, with hundreds of artifacts recorded to be […]