The New Great Game Round-Up: October 28, 2015

Russia Lashes Out at ISIS Sponsors Who Tried to Seize Chechnya, Georgian Government Determined to Destroy Saakashvili Party & More!
*The Great Game Round-Up brings you the latest newsworthy developments regarding Central Asia and the Caucasus region. We document the struggle for influence, power, hegemony and profits in Central Asia and the Caucasus region between a U. S.-dominated NATO, its GCC proxies, Russia, China and other regional players.
Former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and his nemesis Mikheil Saakashvili have left Georgian politics some time ago, one more voluntarily than the other, but the conflict between Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream and Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) continues to shape the country’s political landscape to this day. In an effort to curtail the UNM’s influence in the media, the Georgian Dream-led government is currently trying to shut down the influential pro-UNM private TV broadcaster Rustavi 2. This amounts to a declaration of war from the UNM’s point of view. The Saakashvili party responded by calling for the resignation of the government and snap elections, to no avail. After Tbilisi’s flirt with Gazprom added more fuel to the fire, the exchange of blows then escalated into all-out war a few days ago, when another Saakashvili-era rape video found its way onto the Internet:
UNM regional offices assaulted amid rape video scandal United National Movement’s several regional offices were attacked in Georgia on Monday, in the wake of publication of disgusting video depicting rape of a detainee allegedly during the previous government. Small crowds of 30 to 100 protested at Kutaisi, Batumi, Gori, and Ozurgeti offices demanding to ban the UNM. In several occasions a violent squabble happened between the protesters and UNM members. In Kutaisi protesters broke into the office but police managed to drive them out.

This post was published at Boiling Frogs Post on Christoph Germann | October 29, 2015.