The vote went ahead in spite of the global coronavirus outbreak; although Abkhazia hasn’t recorded any cases, election officials took pains that the disease couldn’t be spread by voting.
Afgan Mukhtarli was freed after nearly three years in prison. His rendering from Tbilisi drew attention to the clout that the authoritarian Azerbaijani government wielded in neighboring Georgia.
A long-awaited deal should make the country’s electoral system more representative of the popular will, and bring an end to the protests and instability that have seized Georgia since last summer.
The criticism from Abkhazia is rare, given its deep dependence on Russia. But a Russian media report about the “poisoning” of an opposition politician appears to have triggered Sukhumi.
On his visit to Georgia, the Armenian prime minister called on the two countries to move beyond their long-running frenemy relations and conflicting geopolitical orientations.
Last year the candidate, Aslan Bzhania, claimed to have been poisoned by the then-president. Now he has fallen seriously ill again and his campaign says the vote can't go ahead without him.
Georgia, the United States and the UK all placed the blame on Russia’s military intelligence service for last October’s attack, the biggest in Georgia’s history.
Following a new eruption, western embassies in Tbilisi sought to restore talks aimed at preventing the country’s political crisis from spiraling out of control.
International law requires Tbilisi to invite the Russian diplomat to an upcoming meeting. But it would violate Georgian law, and the public reaction would be volatile.