Georgian winemakers wish to end dependency on Russian market: 'Otherwise, we risk losing our identity'
When she saw the photo on social media in September 2022, Nino Gagua, a 52-year-old Georgian woman, first thought it was a fake. In the image, the then Ukrainian defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, posed with a bottle of wine produced by her husband, a winemaker based in Kakheti, the wine-growing region in eastern Georgia. The Russian invasion of Ukraine had begun seven months earlier, on February 24, 2022. The minister, dressed in a sweatshirt and khaki cap, promised to celebrate Ukraine's victory with that vintage. With this single photo, the label of the Georgian winemaker, Winiveria, became a symbol of support for Ukraine against Moscow.
"We didn't even know he was aware of our wine," recalled the producer, Giorgi Piradashvili, a cigar in hand, sitting with his wife on the terrace of his wine estate on a May morning. "It came as a huge surprise." It was also a source of pride, because, like the entire Georgian population, he declared his solidarity with the Ukrainians: "We have the same enemy. Russia also invaded Georgia [during a lightning war in August 2008] and still occupies 20% of our territory."
The photo also marked the start of the winemaker's troubles. A Russian blogger spotted it and circulated it on his social media, accusing Piradashvili of funding the conflict. The producer's name ended up on a list held by the FSB, the Russian security services. "It became dangerous for me. They know exactly where I live and could come and get me here," he said, obviously anxious. "It's so absurd. All this just because I sell wine?" Feeling uneasy, his Russian customers canceled their orders, fearing reprisals from the Kremlin. But although Piradashvili defends the Ukrainian cause, he is above all a pragmatic and shrewd businessman.
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France 24
25 minutes ago
- France 24
Russia's 'Mr Nobody' gambles all with film on Kremlin propaganda
Talankin, the school's event organiser and also a keen videographer, found the propaganda work so depressing that he wanted to quit his job in the industrial town of Karabash. Then he received what he says was the strangest message of his life. A Europe-based filmmaker got in touch, offering to collaborate on a project to document the abrupt militarisation of Talankin's school in the wake of Russia's February 2022 invasion of its neighbour. Talankin had earlier seen a post from a Russian company looking for people whose jobs had been affected by the war. Talankin said he was ready to talk. After receiving the foreigner's offer Talankin did not sleep all night. The project changed his life forever. After teaming up with David Borenstein and shooting many hours of footage, Talankin last summer fled Russia with seven hard discs, leaving behind his mother, brothers and sisters and the town he loved. Using the smuggled-out footage Borenstein, a Denmark-based US filmmaker, directed what became "Mr Nobody Against Putin", an award-winning 90-minute documentary which exposes the intensity of the propaganda at Talankin's school and throughout Karabash. It premiered at the 2025 Sundance film festival in January. - 'Persona non grata' - The project cost Talankin dearly. Local officials banned his former colleagues from contacting him, he became a hate figure for supporters of the war and his school librarian mother was upset. "I have become a persona non grata," Talankin, 34, told AFP from Prague, where he is now based. Russia outlawed all criticism of the Russian military and the Kremlin and Talankin knew he had taken huge risks. But he has no regrets. "I would do it all over again." He has been buoyed by the support of people featured in the film including those who lost their loved ones in the war. One former colleague said she became ashamed that she, too, was "part of the system." The documentary reaped awards at festivals and the film crew hopes it will be available to wider audiences in Europe later this year. Borenstein said the film's success had been a "relief" because the multi-national crew overcame numerous obstacles including communication and security. But above all he was "really scared" that if the film flopped Talankin's sacrifice would come to nothing. "I knew the whole time that Pasha would have to leave Russia to make this project happen," Borenstein told AFP, referring to his co-director by his diminutive. "That is a huge sacrifice for him, because his mum is there, his whole life is there, he does not speak English, not at that time." Talankin has not been able to join the crew to present the film at the Sundance festival in Utah and elsewhere due to paperwork issues, but the team hopes this will soon change. For now he is learning English and adjusting to his new life in Prague. 'Like musketeers' Talankin said he was heartened by the reactions at the screenings. One viewer in the Czech Republic said he hated Russians but the film made him reconsider. "We knew nothing about what was happening to you," Talankin quoted the Czech as saying. "It is a powerful and poetic piece of cinema," said producer Alexandra Fechner, who is promoting the film in France. "This film shows the hidden side of propaganda in Russia, which targets the youngest members of society, children who are being taught a rewritten version of history and given guns!" she said. With the war in its fourth year, Moscow has put society on a war footing and leveraged the educational system to raise a fiercely pro-Kremlin generation. The film features Wagner mercenaries telling children about hand grenades and teachers calling Ukrainians "neo-Nazi", and includes an audio recording of a wailing mother at her soldier son's funeral. But critics also point to the documentary's empathy and light touch. In one episode, a history teacher tells pupils that the spiralling prices could soon make gas unaffordable for Europeans. "The French will soon be like musketeers, riding horses, and the rest of Europe too," he said. Borenstein said that by viewing the footage sent by Talankin nearly every day, he understood the effect of the dehumanising war-time propaganda. While at the beginning he found some of the clips shocking, months later his mind had become so used to the onslaught of the propaganda that he did not see the footage depicting the Wagner mercenaries as something abnormal. "I was able to replicate among myself some of the feelings that maybe the students and people in the school felt," he said. "Looking at this propaganda every single day was a lesson in how desensitised you can become to it." A lot of the footage had not made it into the film, including the school's preparations for the possibility of a nuclear attack. Karabash is located close to one of Russia's most sensitive sites, the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant. Talankin said Borenstein did not want the viewers to "drown in the enormous amount of negative material." © 2025 AFP
Local France
10 hours ago
- Local France
How securing rights through citizenship has become 'increasingly fragile'
The first Global State of Citizenship report, by the Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT) at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, analyses citizenship laws in 191 countries in 2024. Researchers found that "with the growing number of armed conflicts and incidence of terrorism worldwide, many countries have introduced provisions for withdrawing the citizenship of a person on the basis of national security grounds.' Over a third of countries, including many European ones, 'can now strip a person of their citizenship when their actions are seen as disloyal or threatening to state security,' the report says, and the trend has been expanding. The practice is linked to an 'increasing securitisation of citizenship' since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 in the USA. Between 2000 and 2020, 18 European countries put in place measures to deprive persons of citizenship because of national security or to counter terrorism. Before 2001, these measures were 'virtually absent', the report says. Recently, the Swedish government commissioned an inquiry on the revocation of citizenship from individuals threatening national security . Germany's coalition parties discussed this option for 'supporters of terrorism, antisemites, and extremists'. Hungary also amended the constitution to allow the temporary suspension of citizenship because of national security. Middle East and North Africa are other regions where these policies have expanded, the report says. Advertisement Ways to strip citizenship The report identifies four ways in which citizens can be stripped of their status on security grounds. Nearly 80 per cent of countries have rules covering at least one of these situations. In 132 countries around the world, and two thirds of European states, citizenship can be removed for disloyalty or for acts that threaten national security, such treason, espionage, trying to overthrow a government or terrorism. Such rules exist in Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK. In 89 countries, however, this rule concerns only to people who naturalised, not those who acquired citizenship by birth. Another reason that can lead to the stripping of citizenship is having committee serious criminal offences, which typically involves having been sentenced to imprisonment for a certain period. These rules exist in 79 countries but only a few in Europe. In 70 countries, citizenship can be removed for serving in a foreign army and in 18 this measure concerns only people who acquired citizenship by naturalisation. In Europe, 40 per cent of countries – including France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Estonia, Turkey, Belarus and Bosnia Herzegovina – can remove citizenship under certain conditions for having served in another army. Latvia, one of the countries that can revoke citizenship for such reasons, changed the law in 2022 to allow its citizens to work with the Ukrainian military forces. Citizenship can also be removed for providing non-military services to another state, such as being elected in a public office, working for certain agencies or just in the civil service. Such rules exist in 75 countries around the world and some in Europe too, including France, Greece and Turkey. Advertisement People naturalised more at risk Luuk van der Baaren, co-author of the report, said at the presentation of the study that 'these developments indeed raise an important question as to what extent is citizenship still a secure legal status'. The data also shows that 'a large share of the citizenship stripping provisions are discriminatory in nature, as they only apply to specific groups, particularly citizens by naturalisation'. This is to prevent that a person remains stateless, but it means that 'citizens by birth have a secure legal status, while those who acquired citizenship later in life do not,' he added. Losing citizenship may not only affect the personal security and life opportunities, but also that of dependants, the report says, as in 40 per cent of countries citizenship deprivation can extend to children. Other ways of losing citizenship There are other ways, intentional or not, to lose citizenship, according to the report. The most common, is to have withdrawn because it was acquired in a fraudulent way. Such rules exist in 157 countries. 156 states have also rules on how to voluntarily renounce citizenship, usually with provisions to ensure that a person does not end up stateless. In 56 countries, people can lose their citizenship if they acquire another nationality, and in 55 this may occur by simply residing abroad. Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 'everyone has the right to a nationality', but four million people in the world are stateless 'because their citizenship remains denied or unrecognised,' the report continues. On the other hand, 35 countries do not allow people to renounce citizenship, or make this impossible in practice. Advertisement Unequal rights The report also looks at ways to acquire citizenship and finds 'highly unequal pathways'. The most common naturalisation requirement knowledge. Less common are economic self-sufficiency, civic or cultural integration, language or citizenship tests, and renunciation of other citizenships. On residency requirements, Americas and Western Europe have the more inclusive measures. Citizenship in European countries is also regulated via the European Convention on Nationality, under which the residence requirement cannot exceed 10 years. In 15 countries the wait is longer than 10 years: Equatorial Guinea (40 years), United Arab Emirates (30), Bahrain (25), Qatar (25), Bhutan (20), Brunei (20), Eritrea (20), Oman (20), Chad (15), Gambia (15), Nigeria (15), Rwanda (15), Sierra Leone (15), St. Kitts and Nevis (14), and India (11).
Euronews
14 hours ago
- Euronews
Zelenskyy awards Order of Freedom to Polish President Andrzej Duda
President Duda arrived in Kyiv on Saturday morning for an unannounced visit, the Polish President's Office said on social media. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiha said the programme of the visit would include a meeting with Zelenskyy and participating in Ukraine's Constitution Day celebrations. "President Duda stood by Ukraine's side in the most difficult times of Russia's full-scale aggression," Ukraine's Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha wrote in a post on Platform X. Sybiha praised Duda as a "true friend of Ukraine". "We are grateful to him and all Poles who have shown true solidarity with Ukraine," he added. The Office of the President of the Republic of Poland also said that President Duda attended the celebration of Ukraine's Constitution Day as the Guest of Honour. During the ceremony, President Duda was honoured with the highest Ukrainian decoration a citizen of a foreign country can receive, the Order of Freedom. According to a decree published on the website of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Duda received this decoration "for outstanding personal merits in strengthening Ukrainian-Polish international cooperation" and "supporting the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine." The Polish Interior Ministry also extended its wishes on the occasion of Ukraine's Constitution Day in a message published on X. "We express solidarity with Ukraine, especially in view of its heroic struggle for freedom and independence. We hope that the democratic values, which are the foundation of Ukraine's constitution, can be restored as soon as possible in the currently occupied Ukrainian lands," the ministry wrote. This is the Polish president's farewell visit to Kyiv ahead of the end of his term in August. President Duda, along with the presidents of the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), visited Ukraine on the eve of the invasion in 2022, and again last August, when he took part in the celebrations for the 33rd anniversary of Ukraine's independence. In August, Duda will complete his second term as president of Poland. President-elect Karol Nawrocki has stated that he remains committed to helping Ukraine's defence efforts, but opposes Kyiv joining Western alliances such as NATO.
