With an eye on the political upheaval in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Wednesday urged Georgia to push forward on its plans to move closer to the European Union.

At the start of bilateral talks between the United States and Georgia, the top U.S. diplomat told Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili that Washington was also unveiling new funding to help Tbilisi integrate with Europe.

A court in Georgia on Monday sentenced former prime minister Vano Merabishvili to five and a half years in prison for embezzlement in a case his lawyer and allies denounced as political persecution.

The court found Merabishvili, who headed the government of ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, guilty of giving fictitious jobs to activists who were involved in his party's losing parliamentary election campaign in 2012.

At least 17 prison inmates in Georgia were hospitalized on Monday with self-inflicted stab wounds as a larger protest over alleged mistreatment rocked the ex-Soviet state's penal system, authorities said.

The inmates from Geguti penitentiary in western Georgia were treated for "self-inflicted multiple stab wounds in their upper and lower extremities," the Ministry of Correction said, as hundreds more convicts pressed on with a hunger strike.

Georgia's march towards the European Union is "irreversible" and "the only way forward" for the ex-Soviet state, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili told Agence France Presse in an interview Tuesday.

Unlike Ukraine, which under Russian pressure walked away from a key trade and political pact with the EU, sparking mass protests, Georgia is keen to sign an Association Agreement with the EU by August this year, he said.

Russian security services on Thursday published the names of the alleged suicide bombers who carried out two deadly blasts last month and said they had also arrested two suspected organizers.

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAC) released the names in a statement just a week before the Winter Olympic Games are set to open in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said on Thursday that he was wary about "provocations" from Moscow but confident the ex-Soviet state could withstand any fresh pressure from the Kremlin.

Georgia, which fought a brief 2008 war with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, initialled a deal for closer ties with the European Union in November and officials in Tbilisi say they hope to ratify the pact later this year.

Ukrainian authorities on Friday briefly detained and then deported a Georgian journalist covering mass pro-EU demonstrations that have gripped the Ukrainian capital since November.

David Kakulia, a journalist from Georgia's Rustavi 2 television station "was briefly detained by border guards upon arrival in Kiev airport and deported," its director Nika Gvaramia told Agence France Presse.

Georgia on Wednesday urged the international community to bolster an observer mission along a ceasefire line fixed after Russian defeated its former satellite in a lightning war in 2008.

After a two-day round of peace talks in Geneva, Georgia's chief negotiator David Zalkaliani said an expanded monitoring presence was needed to deal with a raft of ceasefire violations by Russia and pro-Moscow forces in breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Former Georgian Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili said Tuesday that prosecutors had tried to force him to inform on close ally ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Merabishvili is the highest-ranking Saakashvili ally to be detained following a slew of investigations since Saakashvili's United National Movement party lost out to a coalition headed by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili at parliamentary elections in 2012.

Georgia's parliament on Wednesday confirmed Irakli Garibashvili as the ex-Soviet state's new prime minister, replacing his close ally billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili as premier.

"The parliament has approved the new government by 93 votes to 19," parliament speaker David Usupashvili said.