DFWatch staff 
TBILISI, DFWatch–The breakaway region South Ossetia was left without Internet Tuesday due to damage to a fiber-optic cable. It is so far unknown what caused the damage to the cable connecting the separatist republic to the outside world. The cable belongs to the Russian company Gazprom. Local mobile operator Megafon-Osetia claims the Internet outage is … Read more
TBILISI, DFWatch–Far-right activists in Georgia are uniting to form a new political party and run in the local and national elections, emulating Marine Le Pen’s Front National. One of the proposals of the new party will be to note a person’s ethnicity in the Georgian passport. Georgian March leader Sandro Bregadze said on Friday that … Read more
TBILISI, DFWatch–Breakaway authorities in Abkhazia plan to lift its moratorium on capital punishment in 2020 as tougher sentences are brought in against drug crime. The de facto parliament of breakaway Abkhazia has adopted a new law which imposes tougher punishments for selling large quantities of drugs, including life sentence and even death penalty. The law … Read more
Georgia showed the most significant drop in incarceration rate among Council of Europe member countries between 2008 and 2019. However, it is the second among countries with particularly high incarceration rates just after Russia, according to new statistics released on Tuesday by the CoE on the situation in European prisons covering the period until end-January … Read more
TBILISI, DFWatch–The success of an opposition candidate in Ukraine’s presidential elections has given Georgia’s former leader Mikheil Saakashvili new hope of making a comeback in Kiev politics. After losing power in his home country, Saakashvili re-launched his career as politician in Ukraine, serving first as governor of Ukraine’s strategically important Odessa Oblast for 18 months, … Read more
A Hungarian lowcoster Wizzair has increased the list of new destinations from Kutaisi scheduled to become operational by August to eight from the previous six. The new destinations are two Polish cities of Gdansk and Krakow. Earlier in February Wizzair announced it would add new regular flights to Basel, Copenhagen, Brussels, Tallinn, Eindhoven and Bari … Read more
TBILISI, DFWatch–Tbilisi City Court on Tuesday approved the extradition of UK fugitive Jack Shepherd, whom British media have dubbed ‘the speedboat killer’. At the hearing, Shepherd himself also expressed his consent to be extradited, explaining that it was not an easy decision, but he wants to clear the issue and reunite with his family. The … Read more
TBILISI, DFWatch–A 19-year-old shepherd from Georgia was found guilty on Monday of savagely killing an American couple and their 4 year old son in July, 2018. Apart of homicide of three people, Malkhaz Kobauri was also found guilty of other crimes, including rape. He now faces a life sentence in jail. The cold-blooded murder of … Read more
TBILISI, DFWatch–Groups of Georgian and Indian youth clashed last Thursday in Mtatsminda Park, one of Tbilisi’s main tourist destinations. A video has surfaced showing a fight between groups of young men, with several young women watching. In the video, one of the brawlers, presumably a Georgian, is seen hitting another man violently with an unknown … Read more
GALI, DFWatch–Sokhumi has set a fixed price for obtaining a residene permit, a document that is required, but hard for many here to obtain. The price will now be set to 600 Russian rubles, or USD 25, which is a relatively decent amount even for impoverished Gali residents. However, local ethnic Georgians who compose the … Read more