Rome, May 20, 2023 – Tue Daughter of Lavrov forced to flee Georgia by Putin’s most famous opponent, Alexei Navalny, hard contested at a ceremony in the USA, where she was invited to speak. For or against the tsar, the war in Ukraine had a significant impact on the Russians and especially on the most prominent figures and their closest relatives.
And if, at the end, the protests against the daughter of the Russian foreign minister in Georgia in the face of never-ending tensions between Tbilisi and Moscow, first with the 2004 Rose Revolution’s alienation from the former USSR, then with the Kremlin’s support for the independence of Ossetia and Abkhazia makes it harder to understand American university students’ rejection of the daughter of Putin’s worst enemy, but there is an explanation.
Lavrova flees Georgia
Katerina Lavrova and her husband, the Russian businessman Alexander Vinokurov (According to sources of the Russian opposition, which also received millions of state favors in the affairs of his relatives with Lavrov), they had traveled to Georgia to attend his brother’s wedding. At the news near the hotel where the newlyweds would have celebrated, i.eThe Kvareli Sea ResortThere were protests. The crowd called for the fall of Lavrova and her husband, who were also facing Western sanctions, but the agents responded. Finally, the Georgian Interior Ministry confirmed 16 arrests, including some opposition politicians. The couple were escorted to the border by security forces and, according to Mtavari TV, the two fled to Saudi Arabia.
Dasha Navalnaja competed in the USA
No red carpets either Dasha Navalny, who, together with his mother, continues to fight for the freedom of Putin’s most oppressed opponent and who tries to draw attention to the situation of thousands of political prisoners in Russia, like his father and now American Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, in Russia jailed on flimsy espionage charges. But no, there wasn’t a lack of scathing criticism of the Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) for having Dasha appointed to speak at the ceremony. Navalny’s daughter was challenged groups of Ukrainianswho recalled when the blogger claimed Crimea must be Russian (but he denied it) or his words about the “cockroach” immigrants of his first period close to the nationalists. But there were also dissidents or exiled protesters who did not agree with Putin’s regime and his war in Ukraine, and notably some graduates. Together with Dasha, who was invited anyway, the institute provided two other guests: Debra Tice, mother of journalist and SFS alumnus Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012, and Evan Mawarire, an anti-corruption pastor from Zimbabwe, provided 200 Ukrainian flags available for use at the ceremony. But the most intransigent students were not convinced and went for it stand upright, some with their backs to the stageduring the ceremony, in a peaceful act of anti-Dasha protest.