Salome Zourabichvili

Born in Paris in 1952 to Georgian refugees, Salomé Zourabichvili spent three decades climbing France's diplomatic ladder before serving as its ambassador to Georgia in 2003. A year later she took Georgian citizenship by presidential agreement and became the country's foreign minister, where she brokered a treaty pulling Russian forces from undisputed Georgian territory. Disagreements with the ruling party led her to found her own in 2006, then run as an independent; she won the presidency in 2018 with Georgian Dream's endorsement. The alliance fractured during the 2020 political crisis and shattered entirely after 2023's mass protests - the ruling party tried and failed to impeach her that September. When the legislature elected Mikheil Kavelashvili as her replacement under new rules ending direct presidential elections, Zourabichvili refused to recognize the vote, declaring herself the sitting president until a legitimate successor emerges.