French Ambassador Eric Fournier was reportedly stopped on the morning of August 21 near Gori for three hours as he tried to return to Tbilisi from a village further west. Matyas Eorsi, an envoy from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, was initially refused entry to Gori on August 20, before the decision was reversed. In a blow to local sensitivities, the governor of Shida Kartli, Lasha Vardzelashvili, was detained for two hours by Russian forces after trying to secure a humanitarian aid convoy’s passage through a Russian checkpoint.