Day: April 15, 2026

Georgian Dream Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili said the officials reviewed 165 grant applications over the past year and gave a “positive recommendation” for issuing grants in more than 95% of cases, referring to the controversial procedure under Georgia’s Law on Grants that critics say effectively restricts access for critical media and non-government actors to foreign funding.

The law, which has been amended several times since last April, requires donors to obtain government approval before disbursing grants. Recent legislative changes have significantly expanded the definition of what constitutes such a “grant” while introducing criminal penalties for related violations. Observers warned that these provisions are highly restrictive, noting that the requirements and the surrounding official rhetoric have discouraged donors and beneficiaries from even applying for such approval.

“Not a single project that was not [directed] against Georgia’s national interests was rejected,” Botchorishvili told the disputed parliament on April 15, as she was summoned under an interpellation procedure to answer questions from the opposition For Georgia party. “More than 95% – this concerns projects worth about 47 million lari,” she added.

According to her, the Georgian Dream government made decisions on 165 grant applications between April 16, 2025, and April 8, 2026. April 16, 2025, marks the date when the Georgian Dream-led parliament adopted initial controversial amendments to the country’s Law on Grants, introducing a requirement for foreign donors to obtain government approval before disbursing funds to local organizations.

Botchorishvili claimed that laws and regulations adopted in 2024–2025, which she said were “aimed at preventing foreign interference in [Georgia’s] politics and ensuring transparency of foreign influence, had not led to the suspension or cancellation of any projects.”

The 2025 changes to the Grants Law, along with several legislative acts adopted since 2024 restricting foreign funding, including the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence, often referred to as the Foreign Agents Law, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), have been widely seen as curbing the work of local civil society organizations and media. The April amendments to the Law sparked immediate outcry from Georgia’s Western partners, who expressed concerns and worries that the changes were repressive and would further shrink independent voices in Georgia.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia had provided a similar figure about the number of registered and approved grants to the OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism Rapporteur Patrycja Grzebyk, covering the period up to February 2026. Grzebyk, whose critical report was published on March 12, said Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told her that approval is granted if a grant “does not have political content.” However, she noted that the “mere existence of such a provision may, and in fact does, discourage both donors and potential beneficiaries (especially those involved in challenging the government legally or rhetorically) from even applying.”

Speaking on the basis of the report, Nona Kurdovanidze, former head of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), a prominent human rights watchdog, said on April 14 that the approvals were primarily granted to projects “oriented towards delivering some kind of service,” while watchdog organizations had “entirely vanished” from this space. GYLA, which has operated for over three decades, said in March that it was temporarily suspending its free legal aid services and would focus only on strategic cases, entering what it called “crisis mode” amid increasing pressure on civil society.

Months after government consent became mandatory, the British Embassy said it canceled planned grants aimed at supporting transparency and competitiveness in Georgia’s October 4 local elections. The embassy cited procedural “uncertainty” stemming from the newly amended law.

Online media outlet Tabula later said that a £50,000 British grant had been intended to support its coverage of the local elections. Several civil society organizations, including the GYLA, the Rule of Law Centre, and Georgia’s Future Academy, were also among those affected, as they were reportedly set to receive around £100,000 each from the British Embassy.

Georgian Dream officials later said the British Embassy aimed to fund “propaganda” and “extremism” in the country. The embassy rejected the ruling party’s accusations.

Since April 2025, the disputed parliament has amended the Law on Grants several times. In its first amendment in June, the definition of grants requiring government approval for disbursement was expanded to include “technical assistance” and “knowledge-sharing” from foreign organizations.

The law was further amended in March 2026, when the scope of grants requiring government approval was significantly expanded to cover any potential money or in-kind support from a foreign organization or foreign citizen to a Georgian organization, citizen, or resident engaged in a range of politically related activities. The amendments also introduced criminal liability for violations, including imprisonment of up to six years as a possible penalty in certain cases. The changes, adopted alongside amendments to other laws, were criticized by local and international actors, who warned that civic space and political activity in Georgia could be significantly restricted.

In April, Georgian Dream drafted another amendment that exempted grants disbursed by diplomatic and international organization missions for their “own activities” from the requirement to obtain government approval.

In 2025, dozens of civil society organizations received inspection requests from the country’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, which cited, among other laws, the Law on Grants, to request wide-ranging information about their activities.

Also Read:

• 12/01/2026 – Rights Georgia, Local Watchdog, Halts Work Amid Civil Society Crackdown
• 02/10/2025 – GIP, Georgia’s Key Think Tank, Halts Work Citing Repression, Loss of Mission

The ajika they offer in Imereti is not nearly as spicy as the one served further west. That’s probably because enough tears have already been shed on those rare occasions when it is prepared here. The occasion is the kelekhi, a Georgian funeral dinner. The kelekhi ajika is different from the usual kind, and critics from regions that claim the sauce as their own may even suggest it’s not ajika at all. But what does the name matter? Call it Trump sauce, if you like, or believe it might somehow increase your geopolitical survival chances. What matters is that whoever mixes that kelekhi ajika with kelekhi lobio, a Georgian bean stew, and takes a bite is instantly reconciled with one’s mortality and revealed one transcendental wisdom: that the only bad thing about dying is not being able to dine at your own funeral.

Here is Nini and the Dispatch newsletter, to talk about the culinary magic of Georgia’s funerals, and the solace and wisdom it offers to those left behind.

Kelekhi is a modest and somewhat uneasy ritual, or at least it is meant to be. It offers food to those who come to pay their respects, many of whom have traveled long distances and are likely hungry after an emotionally charged day. They may also drink a glass or two for the soul of the deceased, to help them on their way to eternal peace. There will be some community networking as well: in the countryside, there are few other opportunities to see distant relatives and learn about their lives, aside from occasional weddings.

Of course, no family is in the mood to arrange a large dinner in the midst of grief, and younger people will often tell you that the very idea of feasting minutes after someone is buried is outdated and disrespectful to the deceased. But one is also perfectly aware that the deceased themselves would not have wished to let their mourners go unfed. If they had lived a long, blessed life and passed away at a very old age, chances are they had even spent their later years replaying their last supra over and over again in their head.

One needs to respect their wish, but not overdo it.

The funeral meal often takes place in a plain, greyish hall reserved for such rituals. In rural areas, a special feast tent (“sepa”) may also be set up outdoors. If a grieving family member approaches you after the burial and asks you to “stay” for the kelekhi, you are expected to look shy and hesitant—you didn’t come here for lunch, after all. But neither should you make someone who has gone through so much pain plead too much. If nobody stays to break bread, it is not a good look for the family either.

The ritual expenses are covered by funds the mourners contribute. There is usually a designated person who collects the offerings and keeps the records in a “twelve-sheet notebook.” For those unsure of the proper amount, there is a reciprocal habit of consulting their own family records, their ancestral twelve-sheet notebook, to see what the family in question had offered when tragedy visited their household. Again, tribute should not be overdone.

Some dishes, like lobio, mimic, or claim to mimic, those from the everyday tables of Georgian families. Others, such as different types of plov – sweet or savory (shila), or tsandili, a sweet dessert made with honey, grains, and walnuts, or the kelekhi ajika, are typically reserved for funerals. Not that they are forbidden on less sorrowful days; they simply never taste quite as good.

Fatal Attraction

The question of why the funeral meal tastes so distinctively good is as inescapable as death itself. One can’t help but ask it after taking that first bite and, against one’s conscious will, enjoying it far too much. Browse the internet, and you’ll find people begging for recipes. Some even go so far as to confess to sinful intrusive thoughts about waiting for some distant elderly relative to pass away, just to receive that long-awaited kelekhi dinner invitation.

Those who have attended many kelekhis will offer their theories for why this is so.

There is, of course, a scientific answer. Some say that the flavors of kelekhi dishes simply blend better because they are cooked in large pots, unlike when they are prepared at home in smaller quantities. There must also be some forbidden-fruit psychology at play: the food may taste so good precisely because you are not supposed to enjoy it. But then there are spiritual explanations as well.

According to this roaming anecdote, often heard but hard to verify, about this “American” guest who was once so impressed by the kelekhi lobio that he took both the recipe and ingredients back home. Once he tried to recreate it in the United States, however, it was nothing like what he had at the funeral. Frustrated, he called his Georgian host to ask what he had forgotten to add, only to be told, over the telephone, that the missing ingredient was somebody’s dead body resting nearby.

Not sure about the body, but it would be quite understandable if the soul of the deceased had decided to mess with the meal.

Sauce to die for

Imagine leaving this world after a long, exhausting life and finding yourself in those few lingering days when your soul still clings to familiar places before ascending to heaven.

As the days pass, you look forward to your kelekhi, when everyone you have known and loved finally comes together. Your last spotlight, your last supra. And then all you see is appearances, reservations, “don’t eat this,” “don’t eat that,” endless tiptoeing so as not to disrespect your memory. While alive, you may have appreciated, or even wished for, all that sadness and tears and plainness. But death can be liberating. It frees us from societal pressures and from the vanity of wanting to be cried about. If someone truly wishes to eternalize your memory, they might be better off throwing an unforgettable party. It’s that for us, mortals, joy can be a taboo even greater than death.

Yet you can’t intervene too openly: you don’t want to take others with you just yet. So you use whatever otherworldly powers you have acquired and quietly work your magic on the food. It’s your last party, and they are going to enjoy it, whether they want to or not, and then they are going to talk about it for years to come.

But then there is another haunting question that the fatally delicious food invokes: does somebody really have to die for Georgians to deliver their best performance?

The question becomes all the more pressing as the nation keeps looking outward, only to find everyone else suddenly doing better, everyone else seemingly getting rid of autocrats one way or another, while we, who once saw ourselves as the most freedom-loving, self-reforming society, remain stuck in a deadly, inescapable circle.

What did we forget to add?

Certainly not sacrifice. But perhaps the missing ingredient is the positive liberties one acquires through death-like transformations. Perhaps the only thing that needs to die is the overly prudent politics of “don’t do this, don’t do that,” which still somehow dominates political discourse in Georgia even when there is little left to lose.

Perhaps, at last, it is time for a politics of doing this and doing that.

I wonder why Sean is promoting Russian FSB agent Edward Snowden?TPV Sean (@tpvsean)Edward Snowden Exposes Erika Kirk As “Sleeper CIA Agent” Who Murdered Charlie on Command

According to Edward Snowden, Erika wasn’t just Charlie Kirk’s wife. She was his handler. And her final order wasn’t surveillance. It was cold-blooded murder.

Buckle up. This rabbit hole doesn’t just go deep… it goes all the way to the top.
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  —  https://x.com/tpvsean/status/2044083688925765728

— KT “Special MI6 Operation” (@KremlinTrolls) Apr 15, 2026