Robert Parsons

Robert Parsons is international editor of France 24. He earned a doctorate at Glasgow University for a thesis on the origins of Georgian nationalism.

Georgia: social chasm, political bridge

The arguments in the kitchens and salons of Tbilisi, in its taxi-cabs and buses, its cafes and wine-bars are as fevered today as the mid-summer storms that clatter over the

By Robert Parsons

/ 21 Jul 2009

Georgia on the brink - again

A bizarre standoff between the Georgian government and the country's increasingly desperate extra-parliamentary opposition continues. It began on 9 April 2009 - a national holiday, commemorating the killing

By Robert Parsons

/ 20 May 2009

Georgia: the politics of recovery

Georgia is still dazed by the catastrophic turn of events of August 2008, when a brutal five-day war with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The events of

By Robert Parsons

/ 26 Oct 2008

Georgia after war: the political landscape

As the dust from Russia's tank-tracks settles again over Georgia, the accounting inside the country has begun. For the moment, the accent is on damage- assessment and reconstruction

By Robert Parsons

/ 26 Aug 2008

Georgia’s dangerous gulf

Mikheil Saakashvili's United National Movement won a decisive victory in Georgia's parliamentary elections on 21 May 2008, so crushing indeed that the next parliament will be

By Robert Parsons

/ 30 May 2008

Georgia, Abkhazia, Russia: the war option

What does it take to persuade the European Union that what Russia is doing in Georgia's breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia merits more than a gentle

By Robert Parsons

/ 13 May 2008

Mikheil Saakashvili’s bitter victory

The international community may have given its (albeit qualified) seal of approval to Mikheil Saakashvili's contested victory in Georgia's presidential elections on 5 January 2008, but

By Robert Parsons

/ 11 Jan 2008

Georgia's race to the summit

Georgia is emerging from its new-year hangover this week just in time to vote in the critical presidential election on 5 January 2008 - the most important the landlocked country

By Robert Parsons

/ 4 Jan 2008

Georgia: progress, interrupted

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia told a meeting of doctors in Tbilisi on 14 November 2007 that his decision to order the break up the opposition demonstration a week earlier

By Robert Parsons

/ 16 Nov 2007

Russia and Georgia: a lovers revenge

Vladimir Putin is in a froth of self-righteous indignation. In a Kremlin meeting with party leaders of the state Duma (parliament) on 4 October 2006, the Russian president warned anyone

By Robert Parsons

/ 5 Oct 2006