The leaders of Georgia's ruling party have been pushing a seemingly paradoxical allegation: that Western-funded NGOs supported what the party calls a Russia-sponsored protest movement against the construction of the Namakhvani hydropower plant (HPP) in western Georgia. After the protests mired the project in controversy in mid-2021 the Turkish investor pulled out and it was shelved. It was a setback for the Georgian Dream government, which had argued that the dam would have served to secure the country's "energy independence," reducing…
