The McCain Institute at Arizona State University (ASU) on January 6 announced President Salome Zourabichvili as its 2025 Kissinger Fellow.

“Zourabichvili has served as president of Georgia since 2018. She previously served as Georgia’s first female minister of foreign affairs, where in 2005, she negotiated the withdrawal of Russian military bases from Georgia. She also was elected as a majoritarian member of parliament in 2016. During her tenure as president, Zourabichvili has forcefully defended Georgia’s path to European Union (EU) and NATO integration and supported democratic reform, famously vetoing the Georgian Dream (GD) government’s Kremlin-modeled “foreign agent law” and standing against the party’s autocratic turn.

Zourabichvili has declared the recent October 2024 parliamentary election illegitimate due to widespread intimidation and manipulation by GD and has stood behind the opposition parties refusing their mandates. Following GD’s announcement to suspend the country’s EU accession process, the Georgian people have taken to the streets in widespread protests across the country. They have been met with violence and arrests. Zourabichvili has expressed support for the democratic movement in her country and joined the protest movement.

Per constitutional changes, the next president of Georgia was to be elected in 2024 through an electoral college comprised of local officials and the parliament. On December 14, the parliament, which was illegally convened due to outstanding electoral fraud cases and failure to receive presidential endorsement, participated in the election of a new president, footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili, infamous for his anti-Western rhetoric. He assumed office on December 29. Democracy activists have declared this process illegal and have continued to protest.

Zourabichvili has refused to step down, describing the illegitimate takeover of her country. Like McCain and Kissinger, she embodies tenacious statesmanship and defense of her country’s democratic values. Senator McCain stood in solidarity with Georgians against Russia’s 2008 invasion; as a Kissinger Fellow, Zourabichvili would continue the tradition of principled, strategic leadership in one of the world’s most consequential democratic battlegrounds,” reads the statement of the McCain Institute.

The McCain Institute writes that Zourabichvili will use her vast diplomatic, leadership, and policymaking experience to push for new elections and a democratic path forward in her country.

“President Zourabichvili embodies political courage and the Kissinger Fellowship’s ideals of statesmanship,” said McCain Institute Executive Director Dr. Evelyn Farkas. “She has shown democratic strength and a forceful defense of her country’s democratic place in Europe in the face of violent repression and autocratic takeover. As the McCain Institute’s 2025 Kissinger Fellow, she can continue to lead efforts to return Georgia to a democratic path.”

According to Salome Zourabichvili, Kissinger Fellowship offered to her was a “distinction.”

“In a time of struggle between autocracies and democracies, it is critical that we stand for democratic actors fighting on the frontlines, and Georgia embodies this struggle, which Senator John McCain worked a lifetime to defend,” she said.