David Zedelashvili
@DZedelashvili
Constitutional lawyer and scholar. Commentator on matters constitutional. Eurasia, Russia, CEE, Illiberal and Authoritarian regimes.
This disturbs me also because I witnessed where such turn ended for the Georgian government after the 2008 Russian invasion. It ended in Russian orchestrated state capture. Dear Ukraine, don’t do this. It alienates you from your allies and the skeptics among them gain reasons…
⚡️🤬 The Ukrainian Parliament has passed draft law #12414 – a move widely seen as dismantling the country’s anti-corruption institutions
The Ivanishvili regime acts like Orbán with the EU, while having none of the actual leverage that Orbán enjoys as the prime minister of a member state. There is only one rational explanation for this seemingly irrational behavior: its Russian masters are demanding the quick…
This piece is instructive as an ethnographic account of an individual's adaptation to a personalist dictatorship. It provides a clear picture of how the regime distorts reality in layers. While observing from one of these layers, where the author finds adaptive shelter from the…
#OpEd An anonymous journalist shares why he stayed in Russia and continues reporting for banned media, including The Moscow Times. themoscowtimes.com/2025/07/10/im-…
Kremlin is unhappy. This means President Trump is acting right in pursuit of US interests. Whatever is bad for the Kremlin, is good not only for the US but also for the rest of humanity.
In the Russian papers a change in tone regarding Donald Trump: “Trump changes his mind on key issues as easily as he changes shoes." “Mental gap between Trump & Putin.” “Trump offers Russia too little. The continuation of a good quarrel is better than a bad peace.” #ReadingRussia
Trump sums it up all.
President Trump: "We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless."
Facing immediate prosecution as an “undesirable” organization, biggest and oldest Russian election monitor self-liquidated itself. This is the last paragraph from their farewell notice: “Alas, Justice does not always prevail. One has to fight for it. And there always is a risk…
JUST NOW!!! Pentagon Statement 👇🏻 “At President Trump's direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops. Our framework for…
Yes
I very much appreciate President Trump’s efforts to end the bloodbath in Ukraine, but it takes willing partners. Ukraine has said yes to ceasefires and to any and all meeting requests while Putin continues to defy peace efforts. It is now time to put more tools in President…
In the copycat case of this, reported today, Kremlin’s Georgian serfs even composed a suicide note to be aired on their propaganda media. Their superiors in Moscow are not as wild in imagination, it seems.
Russia's former Transport Minister Roman Starovoit shot himself dead in Odintsovo following his dismissal by President Vladimir Putin on July 7, the pro-government newspaper Izvestia reported, citing unnamed sources.
I used to warn the authoritarian elites around the Ivanishvili regime that Russians would soon recycle them like a bio garbage. This time has arrived. And they are still so stupid and myopic that they can’t see the simple truth: staying silent and trying to adapt now is far…
The more I observe the dynamics of Russia aligned personalist regimes, the more I’m convinced that in practice there is a very thin line between Fuhrer democracy and authoritarianism. Mass repression is a visible symptom of crossing this line. There are interrelated causes that…
Na više lokacija u Beogradu nastavljene su protestne blokade demonstranata koji su se odazvali pozivu studenata na "građansku neposlušnost".
In 2024, during the Foreign Agents standoff with the Georgian regime, I was on Serbian TV. I made parallels between Ivanishvili and Vucic regimes but was careful to emphasize on crucial distinctions. Absence of mass repression under Vucic was among those. However, with every…
This Serbian brave young lady is confronting police during protests in Serbia. She assured them that students “will never stop”. Also, a police officer was looking at her body and she disciplined him. :) As I said yesterday, students don’t fear police.
It seems what I described in the previous post is closer to reality than I initially thought. If this scenario materializes, Russia is left with the control over Georgia through the Ivanishvili quisling regime. However, this regime will get more isolated and encircled. Its…
It seems Azerbaijan’s Aliyev is realizing that when Russians offer carrots, it’s to distract you from the forthcoming stick. I have some advice for him on how to secure his rule from Russian encroachment: • Make a peace deal with Pashinyan and support him against Russian…
It seems Azerbaijan’s Aliyev is realizing that when Russians offer carrots, it’s to distract you from the forthcoming stick. I have some advice for him on how to secure his rule from Russian encroachment: • Make a peace deal with Pashinyan and support him against Russian…
This is to reassure sanctioned political elites and signal to the economic and cultural elites that in case of further sanctions, including suspension of visa free travel, they will be getting visas anyway.
Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze confirmed he had to obtain a visa to travel to Europe, following the EU’s January decision to suspend visa-free access for Georgian diplomatic passport holders. “We simply obtain visas. I traveled with a visa to one of the…