This is

the B.S. I of the world. I'm John Bachelor visiting with Ekaterina Zolotova.

She is in Moscow. She writes for geopolitical, and she's writing about Georgia facing a

parliamentary election in late October. And that election may determine the

two sides to dominate or to retreat over many critical cultural factors, but chiefly

something called a foreign agents law that is meant to intimidate in some fashion restrict at least keep track of

10,000 NGOs in Georgia, some of which are very sympathetic to the European side,

some of which are very sympathetic to the European side, some of which are very sympathetic to the

Russian side. But there was a conflict fought with Russia in 2008 and it's in the minds of

everyone. So we come to what is to be done. But before we go there, I want to mention something

that struck me as odd to explain. At Contrainon, when I was in Georgia in

2018, the second time, I was in Georgia in 2018 the second time I was familiar with downtown and I came out

in my hotel one morning and met a pleasant young men, a gaggle of young men who all had

NATO patches on their arms and they were from different countries in

NATO. And then a young officer, army officer came out and I approached him and introduced myself and asked you've been staying in my

hotel why and he told me the exercises and he pointed to the mountains outside of the city.

Is NATO still present in Georgia today and is that something

that's a controversy for the parliamentary elections or for Moscow?

Well the the parliamentary elections or for Moscow? Well, the presence of NATO in Caucasus is still very strong and I'm not speaking only about Georgia.

We see that right now. There are a lot of negotiations and a lot of

project with the Armenian for example and there are also other countries like Azerbaijan who is

very close to Turkey as the the NATO member. But if we

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