Tengiz Kitovani

Tengiz Kitovani (9 June 1938 to 13 November 2023) was a Georgian politician and military officer, born in Tbilisi, who commanded the Georgian National Guard during the Georgian Civil War of 1991 to 1993. A graduate of the Tbilisi Fine Arts Academy who had taught at a boarding school, he entered politics in 1990 and was named head of the newly created National Guard in December 1990. After falling out with President Zviad Gamsakhurdia he joined Tengiz Sigua and Jaba Ioseliani in a coup in December 1991 and the coup leaders then invited Eduard Shevardnadze to lead the provisional government. As Minister of Defence from May 1992 he sent Guard units into Abkhazia in August 1992, a deployment that preceded the thirteen-month war there. Shevardnadze forced him to resign in May 1993; he was later sentenced for organizing an unlawful armed force and was stripped of Georgian citizenship in 2014.