# Mikheil Kavelashvili **Mikheil Kavelashvili** (born 22 July 1971) is the president of [[Georgia (country)]] installed after the disputed 2024 election — a former Manchester City striker whose legitimacy his predecessor, [[Salome Zourabichvili]], the European Parliament and Ukraine all reject. ## The footballer Kavelashvili played for Dinamo Tbilisi, then Manchester City in the mid-1990s (sources differ on the exact years), then a run of Swiss clubs including Grasshoppers, Zürich, Sion and Basel, and won more than 40 caps for Georgia. In 2015 he was barred from running for president of the Georgian Football Federation because its statute required a higher-education degree, which he does not hold; the state presidency has no such requirement. ## The politician | Date | Event | |---|---| | 18 November 2016 | Enters parliament on the [[Georgian Dream]] list | | 2022 | Co-founds People's Power, an anti-Western faction that formally split from Georgian Dream but was widely seen as its satellite; he says the West wants Georgians "neutral and tolerant towards the LGBTQ ideology" | | 14 December 2024 | Elected president by the Georgian Dream-controlled electoral college, 224 of 225 votes cast | | 29 December 2024 | Inaugurated. Zourabichvili leaves the presidential palace saying "I am taking legitimacy with me" | | 2 April 2025 | Signs the foreign-agents law modeled on the American [[FARA]] *[single-sourced]* | | 17–18 December 2025 | State visit to [[Serbia]], described as his first official European trip *[single-sourced]* | | 17 February 2026 | Annual address: "European bureaucracy has been interfering in our country's internal affairs and applying double standards"; calls the 4 October 2025 protests an attempt "to seize state institutions by violent means" *[single-sourced, parliament's own site]* | The European Parliament's February 2025 resolution refers to Georgia's "self-proclaimed authorities," and Ukraine's foreign minister said in January 2025 that Kyiv does not recognize him. Unlike [[Irakli Kobakhidze]] and [[Bidzina Ivanishvili]], no personal sanctions or entry bans on him were found. ## Why it matters here The Georgian presidency is largely ceremonial, and that is the point of who holds it. Zourabichvili used the office as the one constitutional platform the ruling party did not control — vetoing the 2024 foreign-influence law and refusing to sign the anti-LGBT law. Replacing her with a loyalist, chosen by an electoral college rather than the voters, closed that platform. His first European state visit was to [[Serbia]]. See [[Post-Soviet States]]. ## See Also - [[Salome Zourabichvili]] - [[Irakli Kobakhidze]] - [[Georgian Dream]] - [[Georgia (country)]]