Last week, Tbilisi’s streets descended into anarchy. Thick gray plumes of tear gas twisted toward the sky outside the parliament building on the main thoroughfare of Rustaveli Avenue. Riot police blasted water from cannons and pepper spray at crowds tens of thousands strong, as windows were smashed, bottles and bricks thrown and cars overturned and torched.

The protests erupted on March 7 after the ruling Georgian Dream party began pushing through a controversial draft law that, if successful, would have required independent media and civil society organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence.” By March 9, Georgia’s government had backed down. Some 130 people arrested during the protests were promptly released, and on March 10 an emergency parliamentary sitting was hastily arranged to kill the bill. 

For outside observers, Georgian Dream’s spectacular U-turn may have signaled the end of an outwardly bewildering episode in the country’s politics. In reality, the story is likely far from over.

Dubbed “Putin’s Law” by demonstrators in Georgia, the governing party’s foreign agents bill echoed the measures used to crush dissent in Moscow after they were introduced in 2012. “It’s the trajectory of such laws that makes them frightening,” said Hubertus Jahn, a professor of Russian history at the University of Cambridge. “The impact [in Russia] has been massive. No NGO is operative [and] once these organizations are closed, an open civil society is no longer possible.” Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, the Kremlin has weaponized restrictions against those deemed “foreign agents” such that virtually all opposition voices have now been jailed, driven underground or forced abroad.