Georgia set its pro-European and NATO-oriented course in its constitution under the Georgian Dream (GDR) party government, which has been in power since 2012. It was granted EU candidate status in December 2023. This official line remains, but on the ground, Georgia’s leaders have become increasingly accommodating to Russia and to EU and US politicians, who are increasingly irritated with Tbilisi. Billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder and honorary president of GDR, is seen as the main inspiration for a new pragmatism towards the big northern neighbour and also for a conservative direction influenced by the Georgian Orthodox Church.
Tbilisi has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a significant vote at the UN General Assembly, but has not joined Western sanctions against Moscow. Georgia has passed a controversial law on NGO transparency and funding, dubbed the “Russian law” by the opposition because of its alleged similarity to the restrictive regulation of NGOs in that country. The Georgian parliament has also given the green light to new legislation that, in the name of traditional values, bans propaganda of homosexuality.
The main opposition party is the United National Movement (UNM), founded by Mikhail Saakashvili, president of Georgia from 2004 to 2012. Exiled in Ukraine, Saakashvili obtained citizenship of that country, where he became governor of Odessa. After returning to Georgia in 2021, he was imprisoned and is currently serving a six-year sentence for abuse of power and corruption. He considers himself a political prisoner.
Russia is the main market for Georgia’s agricultural products and Russian tourists, a major source of income, can fly to the country non-stop, unlike EU states that suspended air links with Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine.
The economic benefits of relations with Russia have not made Georgians forget the support given by Moscow to Abkhazia and South Ossetia – two former Soviet autonomies that did not accept Tbilisi’s rule when the USSR disintegrated in 1991 – in the so-called “five-day war” in August 2008, after which Russia recognised those two territories as states and established embassies and military bases there.
In recent years, Russian diplomacy and policy in the Caucasus have taken on new dimensions. Moscow facilitated the reintegration of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan, thus favouring Baku and neglecting its Armenian allies. As regards Georgia, Russian representatives alternate between worrying and hopeful signals. On the one hand, they indicate to Tbilisi that the dismemberment of Georgia as a state could be even worse than it was, and on the other, they hint that a good relationship with Moscow could lead to a positive relationship with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, initially as a transit and trade zone on the route between Asia and Europe.
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Drones, missiles and Ukrainian military operations have turned Crimea into a dangerous place for the Russian fleet and a worrying place for tourists. Russia has had to move some of its ships from its bases on the annexed peninsula to the coast of Abkhazia, a coastline of more than 200 kilometres where the former Soviet base of Ochamchira, on the border with Georgia, is being renovated. In addition to the military factor, Abkhazia has been revalued as a territory of leisure and geographical expansion for Russians and Moscow is pressuring the leaders of Abkhazia to authorise the sale of land and apartments to foreigners – in practice basically Russians – in that paradisiacal environment preserved until now from mass tourism. In its eagerness to collect the price of being the essential “defender” of Abkhazia’s independence, Russia is today much tougher than in the past, sources in Sukhumi tell this journalist.
While Moscow is raising Georgian hopes for a renewed co-existence with its fractious autonomies of the past, the EU and NATO are focusing on recommendations and reprimands to Tbilisi for not being sufficiently belligerent towards Russia.
Petre Mamradze, former chief of staff to former Georgian President Edvard Shevardnadze, says he was stunned in 2016 when a retired veteran Western diplomat suggested to him that Georgia should buy American anti-tank systems because “Russia would see the costs of a possible aggression against Georgia increase.” The diplomat genuinely believed that the small Caucasian state could thus stand alone against its giant Russian neighbor. “In 10 minutes, Russia can block Georgia’s only highway (…) and place its troops on territories that were once Soviet military bases in Georgia,” Mamradze says.
The 2020 parliamentary elections and the 2021 municipal elections were dominated by the stereotype of a confrontation between a pro-Russian bloc (SG) and an anti-Russian Western bloc. The opposition considered that the government had falsified the elections and only the intervention of international observers and mediators managed to get them to accept the documented victory of the SG. The polarization now is the same as then or even worse.
Western “arrogance”
The tone of EU and US representatives towards Georgia is “arrogant” and “humiliating,” says a veteran Georgian analyst from Tbilisi. “In the Georgian provinces, Ivanishvili’s message is well understood: move towards the EU calmly and with dignity and avoid a war like in Ukraine,” he says.
In 2008, Saakashvili sent a military expedition against the civilian population of Tskhinvali, after which Russia brought its troops into South Ossetia, citing the defence of the civilian population. Western narratives downplay Saakashvili’s responsibility in that confrontation and mechanically compare the Russian military incursion into Georgia and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ivanishvili recently called the 2008 war a “bloody conflict between brothers” and a “monstrous crime” that was not desired by Georgians and Ossetians, adding that the perpetrators should soon be brought to justice to enable reconciliation between the Georgian and Ossetian peoples. Moscow welcomed his remarks. “There is a growing understanding that hostility and confrontation after Saakashvili’s 2008 adventure must give way to reason and stability,” said Senator and former Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Grigory Karasin.
The big question ahead of the Georgian election is whether there will be enough independent observers capable of honestly assessing the verdict of the ballot box and of getting Georgians to accept it. In August, Russian intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin accused the US and the West of planning to not recognise the results and said Moscow would not allow a colour revolution in Georgia.
“Russia has the resources to restore its influence in the Caucasus, and Georgia cannot alter its geographical position. Whoever comes to power, Georgia will have to reckon with this reality,” says Tedo Dzheparidze, a former head of the Georgian parliament’s foreign relations committee, from Tbilisi. In his classes with future Georgian diplomats, Dzheparidze says he has observed that his young compatriots know a lot about football in Europe and very little about the history, culture and imperial tendencies of their Russian neighbor.
