TBILISI, May 3. /TASS/. Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has accused former US Ambassador to Tbilisi Kelly Degnan of supporting revolutionary processes in the country in 2020-2023 during a telephone conversation with US State Department advisor Derek Chollet.

"[I] spoke to Derek Chollet and expressed my sincere disappointment with the two revolution attempts of 2020-2023 supported by the former US Ambassador and those carried out through NGOs financed from external sources," Kobakhidze wrote on his X page.

In addition, he said, "false statements made by the officials of the US State Department about the transparency bill and street rallies" were reminiscent of similar false statements made by Degnan in 2020-2023. According to Kobakhidze, Degnan's actions were intended to promote violence by foreign-funded interest groups and to support revolutionary processes. Kobakhidze also "clarified to Mr. Chollet that it requires a special effort to restart the relations against this background, which is impossible without a fair and honest approach."

On Wednesday, Georgia’s parliament passed the second reading of the bill "On the Transparency of Foreign Influence," which had been opposed by President Salome Zourabichvili, the opposition and Western diplomats, who see it as an obstacle to Georgia’s integration into the European Union. Leaders of the ruling Georgian Dream party say that the law is needed to make Western funding of some non-governmental organizations transparent, since in some cases Western money is used to plan revolutions in the country.

Earlier, Kobakhidze had repeatedly spoken about two attempts to organize revolutions in Georgia through foreign-funded non-governmental organizations. According to the Georgian prime minister, during the parliamentary elections in 2020, one of the organizations falsified the results of the manual vote count and accused the Central Election Commission of inaccurate data, which was later used by the opposition in a pre-planned scenario to try to stage a revolution in 2021. In 2022, according to Kobakhidze, after the European Union failed to grant Georgia EU candidate status, NGOs called for the government's resignation, which was an attempt at a revolutionary scenario on their part.

US Ambassador to Georgia Robin Dunnigan said the day before that representatives of the Georgian leadership had been invited to Washington to discuss issues of strategic partnership and US assistance with senior US officials, but had declined the invitation. The Georgian Foreign Ministry clarified that Kobakhidze had been invited on the condition that the Georgian parliament temporarily suspend consideration of the draft law on foreign agents prior to the visit, and that a conditional trip was not in the spirit of partnership.