Month: June 2026

Two founders of Kinderly Georgia, a reproductive medicine agency, have each been sentenced to ten years in prison after a court found them guilty of embezzling funds from surrogate mothers and biological parents, Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on June 30.

The office did not name the convicted individuals, but RFE/RL’s Georgian Service, which has long reported on the case, said they are Armenian national Armen Melikiani, who was arrested on October 1, 2025, and Ukrainian Ruslan Timoschenko, who was sentenced in absentia.

The pair were found guilty by the Tbilisi City Court of “misappropriation of a large amount of money by a group by prior agreement using official position,” the Prosecutor General’s Office stated.

Kinderly Georgia, reportedly registered in 2022, acted as an intermediary between biological parents and surrogate mothers, the office said. It added that the defendants signed contracts with prospective parents, promising to find surrogate mothers and ensure the birth of a child through in vitro fertilisation.

“In this way, the defendants embezzled large amounts of money from citizens of the Republic of China and, instead of covering the surrogate mothers’ various expenses and the remuneration provided for in the contract, using their official position, collectively appropriated more than GEL 2,060,006.5 [USD 780,500] belonging to both potential parents and surrogate mothers.”

In a March 9 article, RFE/RL’s Georgian Service reported that prosecutors said there were 40 victims in the case, including 30 surrogate mothers and 10 biological parents. The article includes testimonies from surrogate mothers, many of whom are foreign nationals, who said they did not receive the USD 16,000 remuneration promised by the company after giving birth, nor postnatal medical care.

The investigation into the case was reportedly opened in spring 2025 after RFE/RL’s Georgian Service published an extensive piece on the issue, including accounts of surrogate mothers living in a closed hostel near Tbilisi’s Station Square, along the railway tracks. They were reportedly moved there after being evicted from apartments when Kinderly stopped paying rent to landlords.

According to the outlet, the surrogate mothers were mainly from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Russia. Among them were also Georgian women.

Reacting to the guilty verdict, Sapari, a women’s rights organization that represented the victims in the case, said it had urged prosecutors from the outset to pursue trafficking charges. According to the group, some of the women were granted trafficking victim status. However, it described as “problematic” the fact that Kinderly’s managers were ultimately convicted on embezzlement charges rather than human trafficking.

Also Read:

• 27/08/2020 – Georgia Tightens Surrogacy Laws

Ukraine is hoping to obtain a license to manufacture France’s SCALP cruise missiles domestically, with negotiations currently underway between Kyiv and Paris, AzerNEWS reports, citing Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

This section includes characters who have appeared in The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon series with recurring role. An empty grey cell indicates the character was not in the season.

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Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov stated that Azerbaijan returned the remains of more than 2,000 Armenian soldiers found since November 2020, stressing that the move was carried out without seeking revenge.

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Georgia’s disputed parliament has termporary suspended the accreditations of three journalists from the opposition-leaning TV Pirveli, amid reports of similar suspensions affecting reporters from other critical TV stations and online media outlets.

Nodar Meladze, TV Pirveli’s head of news, said on June 29 that the three journalists whose accreditations were suspended are Natalia Kajaia, Maka Chikhladze, and Maka Andronikashvili. They all work on his investigative program “Meladze’s Saturday.”

According to the letters from parliament shared by Meladze, Kajaia’s accreditation was suspended for one year on June 29, Chikhladze’s for six months on June 8, and Andronikashvili’s for one month on June 22. Criticizing the move, Meladze said their accreditations were suspended on “”unjustified grounds.”

In all three cases, the head of parliament’s apparatus cited the provision which states that an accredited journalist is “obligated to stop an interview” if an MP, staff member, or guest refuses to allow the interview to be recorded. Meladze said the letters “do not specify which respondent’s interview triggered application of this blanket norm,” adding, “The completely vague explanations make the intention behind this ban clear to us: their goal is to stop critical questions.”

The suspensions came weeks after the Georgian Dream-dominated parliament tightened its accreditation rules for journalists, allowing the legislature to revoke accreditations before they expire, extend sanctions for repeat violations to up to one year, and penalize both individual journalists and their media outlets. Parliament said the changes were modeled on the rules in the European Parliament, which in May suspended access for Georgia’s pro-government Imedi TV for one year after its journalist approached and filmed an MEP “without prior consent.”

The parliament’s latest decisions drew criticism from the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, a non-state media watchdog, which said the legislature is “gradually becoming one of the most closed institutions in the country, hostile toward those journalists whose critical questions some MPs often lack answers to.” The Charter called on the parliament to stop “persecuting journalists” and allow them to work freely in the legislature.

Other media organizations have also been affected by the stricter accreditation rules. Another opposition-leaning TV Formula’s journalist Nini Balanchivadze said on June 26 that her parliamentary accreditation had been suspended for six months under the same provision.

Earlier, on May 22, the disputed Parliament revoked the accreditations of the online outlets Publika and Studio Monitor, citing the absence of accredited journalists from Parliament for ten consecutive weeks. Studio Monitor said it would challenge the decision in court.

Also Read:

• 25/06/2026 – ComCom Fines TV Pirveli Over Use of Terms Like ‘Prisoners of Conscience’
• 13/06/2026 – MIA Says Perpetrators Arrested in February as TV Pirveli Airs Police Violence Footage