April 17 () –
The former Russian president and current vice president of the country's Security Council, Dimitri Medvedev, has shown this Wednesday his support for Georgia's controversial foreign agents law, and has indicated that the social protests against it are driven from the United States.
“Behind these demonstrations there is an experienced and familiar hand from Hollywood. The main thing that the protesters do not like (…) is that they see that it is a 'Russian idea' and not a Western initiative,” Medvedev said in his official Telegram channel.
Thus, the former Russian president recalled that Western countries have already carried out a “wave of fierce criticism” against Kyrgyzstan also for adopting a law on foreign agents that forces organizations that receive funds from other countries to “register in a special registry.” .
“Behind all this is the arrogance and impotent anger of those who are increasingly rejected directly and do not want to obey them,” said Medvedev, who remembers that a year ago, when Georgia paralyzed the approval of this same legislation, Washington expressed “satisfaction.”
As noted by the Russian leader, the State Department argued at that time that the proposal was “incompatible with Euro-Atlantic values”, something it considers to be true, although the United States has had a foreign agents law since 1938.
In Medvedev's words, these US regulations provide for everything from economic sanctions to prison sentences for “undesirable” people and organizations. This is considered “quite normal” because the law is American, but when another country seeks to promote regulations to regulate foreign agents, Washington charges against them.
“I think that even if it had provided for the death penalty for foreign agents, Washington would have found justification for such repression,” Medvedev concluded, adding that both the United States and the European Union seem “quite happy” with the agent laws. foreigners from other countries such as Israel, or Hungary and Australia, where the rule is “much stricter.”
The Parliament of Georgia has approved the controversial foreign agents law in a first reading held despite the strong protests registered since the beginning of this week against the bill promoted by the Government.
This project requires all organizations, media outlets and similar entities that receive at least 20 percent of their financing from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence”, a measure similar to those in force in Russia.
The text of the bill is now the same as in 2023, although with some modifications. However, last year the opposition and part of society demonstrated against this legislative proposal for being a show of sympathy with Russia. The Government, for its part, rejected these accusations and defended that the proposal would simply serve to have a list of organizations financed from abroad.
