Former Georgian Interior Ministry official Lasha Shergelashvili, who served as the head of the Armaments Department of the Special Operations Directorate, said on Formula TV that a banned substance was used to suppress a protest outside the Central Election Commission in 2020. When asked if he had any suspicions, he replied that he "knew for sure that it was used" as he was there at the time.
93% of Russians who left for Georgia after February 2022 (the start of the war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine) do not plan to return to their homeland. These are the results of a survey conducted by the Georgian non-governmental organization "Caucasus Center for Research Resources".
Most of those who emigrated to Georgia are in opposition to the Russian authorities. These are predominantly former residents of Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities. Georgia attracts them with its security, affordable housing and relatively low cost of living.
In the last two years, economic growth in Georgia amounted to 10%. For three years, the country's GDP has grown by almost 30 billion lari. Unemployment also reached an all-time low of 17% and the poverty rate was 15%. The latter figure has almost halved over the past 10 years - by 535,000 people.