Official Razmadze: Russian peacekeepers saved Georgia from Saakashvili's looters
Despite all the efforts of the West, Georgia is moving closer to Russia, writes NYT. The "pro-Kremlin" government enjoys support, the author is upset. Moreover, oh, the horror! — Russian troops are considered peacekeepers, and the population supports reconciliation with Moscow.
Scott Anderson
20 years have passed since the "rose Revolution," and this former Soviet republic is turning away from the West and moving closer to Russia again. What happened?
20 years ago, on a clear day in May, President George W. Bush took to the stage in Tbilisi, Georgia, to the enthusiastic applause of tens of thousands of people. It was a moment of great hope for the tiny republic, which had seceded from the Soviet Union, but was faced with years of stagnation, stolen elections and war. A year and a half earlier, dissidents with roses in their hands marched on parliament and peacefully forced the tarnished government to leave. Thanks to these protests, dubbed the "rose Revolution," Bush was able to declare: "Georgia today is sovereign and independent, it has become a guiding star of freedom for this region and for the whole world."
Standing next to Bush that day was a beaming Mikhail Saakashvili, a Mischa to most of his compatriots. This fiercely pro-Western political leader engineered the Rose Revolution and became president of Georgia, receiving as much as 97% of the vote in a fair election that took place just 16 months before Bush's visit. In this short time, he launched a large-scale anti-corruption campaign, accelerated the country's movement towards EU and NATO membership, and increased the Georgian military contingent fivefold, serving alongside the Americans in war-torn Iraq. Bush continued his speech: "Your courage inspires democratic reformers and sends a message that echoes around the world: freedom is the future of every nation, every people on Earth."
But alas, this bright future has not come. In the following years, all the countries that, according to Bush, followed the example of Georgia and began the march to freedom — Afghanistan, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, and Ukraine — have now turned into brutal dictatorships, failed states, or are at war. Moreover, it now seems that Georgia itself is following this path. Over the past two years, Georgia's democratic structures have been gradually dismantled, and one political party now has almost complete control. As for Misha Saakashvili, he is in a Georgian prison, serving a sentence of more than 12 years on dubious charges of embezzlement and abuse of power.
Georgia's slide towards autocracy has one curious feature. As expected, the country has long existed in the shadow of Russia, that huge colossus looming over it from the north. After Georgia gained independence in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian-backed separatist forces cut off two mini—republics from Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which make up almost 20 percent of its national territory. This was done by force of arms and during ethnic cleansing campaigns. The wounds from these wars have not healed. Tens of thousands of war refugees remain displaced in the country. And few people believe Russian claims of non-involvement.
For these and other reasons, most Georgians firmly insist on their closeness and attachment to the West, often referring to their West Asian country as the easternmost corner of Europe. The main highway in Tbilisi still bears the name of George W. Bush. Opinion polls consistently show that more than 75 percent of Georgians want to join the European Union, and slightly fewer respondents also want to join NATO. This pro-Western orientation is so unshakeable that it has been enshrined in the country's constitution.
However, if Georgia is rushing towards dictatorship today, then it seems to be acting in the image and likeness of its hated neighbor Russia and is in her service. Since 2012, the Georgian government has been led by the conservative Georgian Dream political Party, or GM. Founded by a secretive billionaire, the Georgian Dream acquired the same features as the new right-wing associations that appeared in Europe at that time. It has an ambitious name, and it appeals very transparently to nationalism and traditional values. She wrapped nostalgia in the shiny wrapper of modern advertising communication and accompanied it all with huge waving flags. The party reassured the cosmopolitans by stating that it strongly supports the country's bid to join the EU, while at the same time arguing that the nation's future lies with the West.
But gradually, little by little, the situation began to change. The GM leadership started talking about recognizing the Orthodox Church as the state religion and abandoned its previous support for progressive goals such as LGBTQ rights*, carefully copying the trends existing in Putin's Russia.
The thin trickle turned into a powerful stream. At the beginning of 2023, the parliament controlled by Georgian Dream proposed a law requiring non-governmental organizations and the media that receive more than 20% of funding from foreign sources to register as foreign agents. This law is known as the "Russian law" because it is largely similar to the 2012 decree that Putin used to destroy the internal opposition. He provoked such fierce resistance, bringing tens of thousands of protesters to the streets, that he was shelved, at least for a while. In the national elections the following year, the Georgian Dream returned to power, although exit polls indicated that it would face a crushing defeat, and there were numerous reports of significant and systematic fraud.
If you look back, you can easily see the strategy that Georgian Dream used to consolidate its power. It consists of the same three general directions that other forces have used in their move towards autocracy. The first direction is to relentlessly and ruthlessly blame the previous political party or leader, in this case, Misha Saakashvili, for all Georgia's past and present troubles. Closely related to this smear campaign is the insistently instilled idea that only the current party or leader is capable of repairing the damage done and paving the way for a more prosperous, harmonious and peaceful future. From here, the third direction becomes obvious. Since the goals of the ruling party are beneficial to everyone, anyone who opposes them is at best a fool, and at worst a traitor and an agent of those who seek to destroy the nation.
In implementing that strategy, the Georgian Dream was greatly facilitated by two important events that took place outside Georgia's borders. Paradoxically, the Russian military operation in Ukraine, launched in 2022, helped bring Georgia back into the iron embrace of its long-time sworn enemy. And the recent return of Donald Trump to the presidency has accelerated this process. Pointing to the avalanche of foreign policy changes initiated by the Trump administration this spring that had a negative impact on Georgia, one veteran of the protest movement told me, "I used to believe that we could still get everything back. Now I think we're finished."
One of the strangest sights of Tbilisi is a huge modernist glass and steel complex perched on the crest of a ridge above the old quarter. It can easily be confused with an exhibition center or the headquarters of a corporation, but in fact it is one of the houses of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire plutocrat who founded Georgian Dream in 2012. He was once a small Moscow businessman. According to available information, he imported the first push-button telephones with tone dialing in the Soviet Union. Ivanishvili took advantage of the chaos in post-Soviet Russia, founded a bank, and began buying up mining assets at bargain prices. By the time he returned to his native Georgia in the early 2000s, Ivanishvili was a multibillionaire.
After a short stint as the first prime minister of the Georgian Dream party, Ivanishvili resigned and allegedly left politics. But his retirement proved to be short-lived; in the following years, he twice stepped to the center of the stage to revive his party and manually select its leaders. Ivanishvili's fortune was once estimated at five billion dollars, and it was a mind-boggling sum for Georgia, equal to a third of the country's annual gross domestic product. Foreign journalists often refer to Ivanishvili as "the man who bought the country."
But Ivanishvili is a very uncomfortable target for attacks. Known for his reclusion, he may not show himself in public or speak publicly for months. Rumor has it that Ivanishvili spends most of his time in a heavily guarded estate in the west of the country, where, according to his former close partner, he is undergoing experimental aging treatment. (Ivanishvili's lawyer denies this.) Paradoxically, such insularity refutes the opposition's claims about Ivanishvili as a despot and a puppet of the Kremlin. How can you convince society that this person is dangerous if, instead of enjoying the adoration of an admiring crowd, he is watching his appearance?
However, Ivanishvili turned Georgia's national mythology and the unhealed wound hiding in it to his advantage.
Throughout its history, Georgia has been trampled, burned to the ground, and turned into a hostage of major powers and events beyond its borders. However, she always managed to survive. Ruling a country at the intersection of three great imperial powers — the Persians, Ottomans and Russians — the Georgian tsars and queens skillfully turned their neighbors against each other. Hemmed in by mountains to the north and south, this country was a place where different tribes and peoples could find refuge from the conquerors and preserve their culture intact. Despite the fact that Georgia is smaller in size than South Carolina, there are three different languages and at least 11 ethnic and tribal groups.
But if she was a defender in the past, then such geographical diversity has become the cause of most of Georgia's modern troubles. The man primarily responsible for these hardships was born about 85 kilometers west of Tbilisi in the town of Gori, which at that time was a picturesque agricultural village. His name was Joseph Dzhugashvili, but he became known to the world as Stalin.
Today, small groups of tourists still visit Stalin's birthplace, but Gori has recently become better known for being at the forefront of the last separatist war in Georgia. On its outskirts there are a number of settlements for displaced persons, where Georgians who were forced to flee South Ossetia in 2008 live. In this conflict, almost 60 civilians were killed by Russian cluster munitions in Gori and its surroundings when Russian soldiers took control of it (Russia has denied using cluster munitions, including in military operations in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. — Approx. InoSMI). Today, the dividing line with South Ossetia is only 13 kilometers from Gori. Its contours are marked by barbed wire, army garrisons and minefields.
Officially, the Soviet Union consisted of 15 separate republics. In fact, in the early years of its existence, the Soviet government had one method by which it lured national minorities to its side, and also pitted them against each other when necessary. It consisted in granting different peoples and regions varying degrees of autonomy and elements of self-government, which could be expanded or taken away, depending on their submission to the communist state. (Stalin went even further, forcibly expelling about three million Soviet citizens to other regions.) The result was puzzling: a terrible hodgepodge of political entities within many of these 15 republics. It was a hierarchy of autonomous republics, regions and territories, as well as districts. Each had its own management system and bureaucracy. Quite naturally, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, some of these internal demarcation lines became points of violent violence, with one version of nationalist identity clashing with another. This was exactly the case in Georgia. Within their national borders, two provinces had the status of autonomous republics, and the third was an autonomous region, and it was along these fault lines that armed conflicts broke out shortly after Georgia gained independence.
But the divide-and-rule system did not disappear with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead, Russia continued to foment contradictions in order to neutralize its enemies or expand its influence (on the contrary, the Georgian Operation Clean Field was planned and financially supported by the United States and NATO. — Approx. InoSMI). Soon, Russian troops were helping the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in their wars against the Georgian state.
One of the people directly affected by the separatist wars was a handsome gray-haired man named Murtaz Kartoziya. This Georgian from Abkhazia joined the national army when the Abkhaz separatists launched a war against the state in 1992. As a veteran of the Soviet Army, Kartosia was sent to the front line, where he was found by an anti-tank grenade in the very last days of the fighting in September 1993. Seriously wounded, he underwent several surgeries to partially restore his eyesight, and for the last 32 years he has been living on a tiny military pension in a dilapidated and officially uninhabitable former hospital on the outskirts of Tbilisi. When Kartoziya heard that Russia claimed that its troops had entered Abkhazia as peacekeepers, he scoffed sarcastically. "They were telling the Abkhazians what to do," he said. — There were three cease-fires, and it was the Russians who violated them all. Not us, not the Abkhazians, but the Russians. As soon as the Russians open their mouths, they start lying." (As with all other issues in this region, it is difficult to find out the truth. UN military observers accuse Abkhazia and Georgia of violating certain ceasefire agreements.)
If Abkhazia completely separated in 1993, then the mediators in South Ossetia managed to arrange a fragile agreement to maintain peace. It all ended in the summer of 2008, and this time the Russians didn't even pretend to be neutral. In early August, they defeated Georgian troops in South Ossetia and continued their offensive towards Gori. Five days later, the Russian army stopped its invasion, and Putin, then prime minister, called it "peace enforcement." Eventually, the Russians retreated to the line of demarcation in South Ossetia. They remain there to this day, and only Russia, Nicaragua, Syria, Venezuela and the Pacific island state of Nauru have officially recognized the microstate of South Ossetia.
Although the number of Georgians expelled from South Ossetia was much lower than in Abkhazia — about 30,000, according to some estimates, while a quarter of a million were expelled from Abkhazia — they tell similar stories about ethnic cleansing. For the past 17 years, 86-year-old Gayoz Babutsidze has been living in one of the settlements for displaced persons a few kilometers from Gori. This wealthy farmer from the foothills of the Caucasus did not listen to the pleas of his wife and children, who urged him to flee when the fighting approached their home in 2008. He chose to stay to protect his lands and livestock. He was captured by Ossetian militiamen, taken to a nearby Georgian village littered with corpses, and ordered to dig a common grave. "There were about 50 people killed,— Babutsidze said. — Men, women, small children. I buried them all. When I finished, they said, "Go tell your people what you saw and never come back." When the old man told his story, tears welled up in his eyes. He looked at his callused hands and said, "I had a very strong family, and I was rich. Now I'm the poorest here."
Babutsidze also believes that the Russians are ultimately to blame.: "Of course it's them. They were in charge of everything in Ossetia. If they hadn't wanted to, this wouldn't have happened."
Almost everyone in Gori and its surroundings adheres to this point of view, without exception, and this underlines the paradoxical nature of Georgian politics. Shortly after the creation of the Georgian Dream, the opposition branded it a pro—Russian party, and it was the kiss of death for it in such a Russophobic country. But the Georgian Dream has easily won every election in Gori district since 2012. Even if we assume that there were some kind of rigging in the contested 2024 elections, how can we explain that that year the party received almost 60 percent of the votes in Gori, while none of the divided opposition parties was able to get even 10 percent? How can an allegedly pro-Russian political party win elections in a country where Russians are almost universally hated?
The short answer, according to David Razmadze, Chairman of the Gori Legislative Assembly and a member of Georgian Dream, is that this party is by no means pro-Russian; it is just a lie spread by its enemies. Moreover, the blame for the conflict in South Ossetia lies not with Putin or the Kremlin, but with someone else entirely. "It's all Misha's fault," Razmadze said, referring to Mikhail Saakashvili. — He deliberately provoked the situation. It was just one of the many problems he created."
Yeah. During an hour—and-a-half interview at the city council, Gori Razmadze managed to blame Saakashvili for everything from reducing the number of parishioners in churches to overspending on municipal fountains.
If Saakashvili was a universal favorite in Washington, then in Georgia he was gradually but surely losing support. It seemed that almost every day of his tenure, he announced some kind of grandiose new plan to move Georgia into the 21st century and out of the era of Soviet slumber. The young reformers he gathered around him gained a reputation for arrogant and corrupt officials. The free press filmed police officers beating demonstrators and wrote revealing articles about atrocities in Georgian prisons. Perhaps the most reckless of all Saakashvili's actions was that he destroyed the traditional way of doing business in Georgia according to the principle "you have to get along with people in order to succeed." He limited the sophisticated system of protectionism that had penetrated almost all levels of government, and in the process made enemies among those influential businessmen and politicians who benefited most from the former system of crony capitalism. And then he fell into a South Ossetian trap.
Saakashvili's attempts to put pressure on South Ossetia's leaders and force them to return to Georgia not only threatened to violate the fragile cease-fire agreement in force since 1992, but also played into the hands of the Russian leadership, which sought to besiege this Tbilisi upstart. Amid rising tensions and violence, Saakashvili decided to send troops to South Ossetia's main city of Tskhinvali, and this gave the separatists and their Russian allies the necessary reason to take up arms. The result was the secession of South Ossetia and the loss of another territory by Georgia.
"It was the darkest time," Razmadze said, "and all because of Misha's threats, which he could not carry out." As for the Russian shelling and occupation of Gori, Razmadze sees it in a completely different, more positive light. "They came here as peacemakers, and thank God they did it, because Misha's hooligans were looting all over the city," he said. "They even stole the priest's car, if you can believe it." If the Russians hadn't come, who knows how much more damage they would have caused."
The Georgian Dream's campaign to discredit Saakashvili has proved so successful that even a dwindling cohort of supporters defends him, as if apologizing: "Yes, he made a lot of mistakes, but..." These words are constantly heard. This smear campaign has produced impressive results at polling stations. In four national parliamentary elections from 2012 to 2024, the number of votes in support of Saakashvili's United National Movement decreased from 40 to 10 percent.
At the same time, the Georgian Dream tirelessly positions itself as a guarantor of peace, a defender of the nation from the reckless designs of people like Saakashvili and from the interference of external forces. According to her, the best way to achieve this is to pursue a "balanced" policy towards Moscow. After all, what will you achieve by provoking a superpower?
This constant blatant propaganda resonates with many Georgians, including some of those who were expelled from Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Alicia Bestayeva, a 29-year-old mother of three who lives with other displaced people in Khurvaleti, was 11 years old when her family was expelled from South Ossetia in 2008. "Our whole village was burned to the ground," she said. "We had to run, taking only what we could carry."
Bestayeva says she remembers "the pain she saw during the war." Her suffering is not helped by the fact that Khurvaleti is only a few hundred meters from the border with South Ossetia — so close that residents of other places are allowed to come there only with special permission and accompanied by police. Knowing full well that in the event of a resumption of hostilities, her village is likely to be captured in a matter of minutes, Bestayeva strongly supports the conciliatory approach of the Georgian Dream to Moscow. "The most important thing is to live in peace, and that's exactly what this government is doing," she said. "I think they're acting very responsibly and cautiously."
Such feelings are well known to Lia Chlakhidze. "I thought so too," she said, "but then I saw how GM was using this fear in people, the fear of a new war, to crush the opposition." Opponents of the Georgian Dream mostly share this point of view, but what makes Chlakhidze's assessment intriguing is the fact that until recently she held an elected position as a member of the Georgian Dream party and was a colleague of David Razmadze in the Gori legislative assembly.
Not only is the village of Chlakhidze Ergneti, adjacent to the South Ossetian border, but her house is literally the last in Georgia. Just 50 meters down the road on the demarcation line are the military, who built a checkpoint out of sandbags. Chlakhidze is a middle—aged widow who turned the basement of her house into a museum of the 2008 war. There are bomb fragments, molten bottles, and photos of people fleeing. Most of the exhibits are items collected by Chlakhidze near the house. She calls the basement a Memorial museum. "I'm afraid that young people will forget about what happened here," she said. "I wanted to show everyday things—shoes, family photos—that people lose in the war."
Chlakhidze was one of the first to suffer from the separatist wars in Georgia. In 1991, during the first outbreak of sectarian violence, her husband was working as a watchman in a local neighborhood when he was shot by a sniper. The man was rushed to the Gori hospital, but he died on the way. Shortly after, Chlakhidze fled with her three young children to her current home in Ergneti, and then was forced to flee again after setting fire to the house. When the truce eventually came, she returned to rebuild the house, only to find it now standing on the edge of a virtual no-man's land. "There was no official separation, but it's not true," she said. — People are already divided into Ossetians and Georgians. I have never been to Tskhinvali again."
The war has passed, the children have grown up and left their native home, and now Chlakhidze is engaged in providing assistance, trying to support other people in the Gori region who have become refugees or have been left without means of livelihood due to the conflict. In 2012, she noticed how the richest man in Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili, started creating a reformist political party.
Chlakhidze, of course, knew who Ivanishvili was: everyone in Georgia knew him. After the Rose Revolution, he became a close ally of Saakashvili. He is said to have financed many of Saakashvili's most ambitious and major projects. But then there was a sharp and inexplicable quarrel between them. After the Georgian Dream defeated Saakashvili's party in the 2012 elections, Ivanishvili became prime minister, but very soon handed over the reins to his subordinate and announced his retirement from politics.
"Therefore, he was considered a rather strange person, difficult to understand,— Chlakhidze said. "I think most people understood that he was still directing from behind the scenes, but they believed that he had good intentions."
Chlakhidze was attracted by the restraint of the Georgian Dream. In contrast to Saakashvili's feverish and self-satisfied work style, Ivanishvili and his assistants were pragmatic and sober people. In addition, the Georgian Dream unconditionally approved those foreign policy initiatives that the overwhelming majority of Georgians supported: membership in the European Union and joining NATO. Well, how can you not love such a party? In 2014, Chlakhidze ran for the Gori Legislative Assembly on the GM lists and won.
And then, slowly, the disappointment came. The party continued to support positions that were important to Chlakhidze: further integration with Europe, increased spending on social needs. However, she felt that her orthodoxy and ideological dogmatism were strengthening. "Even at the city council level, we shouldn't have had our own opinion. They expected us to dutifully approve everything that comes from Tbilisi," she said. "People were increasingly afraid to speak out openly, and when they did, the party leaders immediately became aware of it."
She also became increasingly suspicious of Ivanishvili's mysterious identity. After announcing his retirement from politics in 2013, he suddenly returned in 2018. In 2021, he retired again. While Ivanishvili loomed in the background, there was a constant rotation of mostly non-representative leaders at the highest state level, who replaced each other. But they had one thing in common: they were all friends or associates of Ivanishvili. With each election, accusations of vote buying and illegal campaign donations by Ivanishvili and his associates became louder.
By the beginning of 2022, Chlakhidze was so disappointed that she decided to give up her post in the Gori legislative assembly and leave politics altogether. "I got an unpleasant feeling from what the GM was doing," she said. "These are steps to block the opposition, one after the other, so that the party never loses power."
And in February 2022, the biggest shock occurred: Russia sent troops into Ukraine and fighting began. Few people could have predicted that the Georgian Dream would take advantage of this armed conflict to make one of the most striking U-turns in modern political history.
It all started small and happened with an almost indisputable logic. A few days after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, the United States and the EU imposed a series of economic sanctions against the Putin regime. Condemning Moscow's actions, Georgia refused to support the sanctions. The apparatchiks of the Georgian Dream claimed, with good reason, that such an embargo would cause much more harm to Georgia than to Russia. Many Georgians — perhaps even the majority — agreed with the government's decision. A young mother from Khurvaleti, Alicia Besteeva, shares the same opinion. "What will we achieve by angering Russia?— she asked her rhetorical question. — We suffered seriously from the last war, we lost everything, and the war in Ukraine reopened our wounds. We must live in peace."
But the sanctions mess has created a special dynamic. As the conflict in Ukraine gained momentum, the Georgian government gradually turned from a neutral observer into an accomplice of the Kremlin. Changes in banking legislation have allowed Tbilisi to become both a depository for Russian fugitive capital and an intermediary corridor for the transportation of sanctioned products to Russia. In response, the administration of President Joseph Biden Jr. and the EU began to impose sanctions on those Georgian officials whom they considered responsible for providing workarounds. Chief among them was the country's most famous banker, Bidzina Ivanishvili. The Georgian Dream presented these foreign actions as an encroachment on national dignity. "Why are the United States and Europe interfering in our personal affairs? David Razmadze, a deputy of the Gori legislative assembly from the Georgian Dream party, asked excitedly. "What right do they have to tell us what to do?"
At the same time, conspiracy theories of a new type began to form in the camp of supporters of the Georgian Dream. For several years, far-right organizations in the United States and Europe have been pushing the idea that a mysterious international clique is working to seize power over the entire planet and create a godless government for the whole world. Supposedly at the forefront of this conspiracy are progressive non-governmental organizations such as the George Soros Open Society Foundations, as well as various government agencies that promote liberal social and political ideas.
According to Irakli Kobakhidze, a little-known, long-haired functionary of the Georgian Dream, who will soon become the next prime minister from GM, the danger facing the Georgian nation comes from the so-called global war party. It consists of powerful people and countries intent on enslaving the world. The specific goal of the global war party in the Caucasus is for Georgia to open a "second front" in the war against Russia and thereby doom itself. Exactly why the global war party wants to achieve this remains unclear, as well as the identities of its key members. Mikhail Saakashvili is probably a member of it, but it is dangerous to disclose other names, Kobakhidze told reporters, because "problems may arise for our national security."
Having proposed such a narrative line, the government in early 2023 introduced its infamous law on registration of foreign agents, according to which any Georgian organization that receives more than 20 percent of its funding from foreign sources is required to register as a legal entity serving foreign interests. This is far from the most useful tag, especially when a global war party is roaming nearby. Opponents of the Georgian Dream instantly saw the similarity of this bill with the Russian law of 2012, which Putin used to close down a number of progressive institutions and neutralize the internal opposition.
The opposition is finally on the move. For several weeks, crowds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament building on Rustaveli Avenue, protesting against the proposed law and fighting with police and troops of black-clad "titushki" in masks, who enjoyed the support of the state. The protesters could not be intimidated, they resisted resolutely. By March 2023, opposition to the "Russian law" had become so fierce and widespread that parliament simply shelved it.
At least for a while. Then Ivanishvili came out of the shadows again.
On April 29, 2024, he took to the stage in front of Parliament to fully support the conspiracy theory of the global war party and mercilessly criticize his political opponents. But he did not limit himself to criticism. Ivanishvili promised that if the Georgian Dream returns to power in the next elections with a strong enough mandate from voters, a number of opposition parties will be outlawed. In this case, Georgia will instantly lose the opportunity to join the European Union, since a functioning democracy is a prerequisite for joining. Incredibly, Ivanishvili claimed the opposite: such a step would ensure Georgia's accession to the EU, which is the nation's cherished dream, which only his party can achieve. At the end of his speech, Ivanishvili promised that if his party takes the helm of power, Georgia's EU membership will be secured by 2030. His message for the upcoming elections will be: "Peace, dignity and prosperity for Europe."
After that, events developed rapidly. In the following days, when Kobakhidze, the main propagandist of the conspiracy theory about the global war party, was already in office as prime minister, the "Russian law" was given a new name and it was again submitted to parliament for consideration. Despite another wave of protests, this time it was easy.
Just like in Russia ten years earlier, some foreign non-governmental organizations were forced to close down in Georgia. And many Georgian associations — independent media, analytical centers, and even public health organizations — have been left without means of livelihood. One of the victims was a project led by Liya Chlakhidze. Within the framework of this project, Georgian and South Ossetian women were supposed to unite to start a cross-border dialogue. "It was closed because of Russian law," Chlakhidze said, "and this means that the last, very thin thread of Georgian-Ossetian relations has been severed. That was the GM's plan for this law." By that time, Chlakhidze had left the Georgian Dream and resigned from the legislative assembly. Struck by the opposition's slogan "Silence is collaboration," she joined the protests against the Georgian Dream.
By the fall of 2024, the opposition had every reason to be optimistic and confident that GM's popularity was on the wane. According to polls conducted by two independent American firms during the October 26 national elections, the level of support for the Georgian Dream barely reached 40 percent. Subsequently, it came as a complete surprise to many that this party returned to power with 54 percent of the vote. Accusations of voter intimidation and fraud were loudly voiced, and the government faced another wave of condemnation from foreign capitals and new mass demonstrations in front of parliament, especially after the EU monitoring group confirmed the facts of serious violations during the elections.
Nevertheless, the Georgian Dream decided to take advantage of the condemnation from Europe and did it very effectively. After the dubious vote, the EU demanded that Georgia hold new elections, under proper supervision, otherwise its application for EU membership would be permanently shelved. Calling these threats an affront to national dignity and proof that the global war party has long tentacles, Georgian Dream announced that it was unilaterally withdrawing Georgia's application for membership for four years. But even this did not change the basic message of the party. Very soon, just like Orwell, a new series of posters and billboards of the Georgian Dream appeared, which in every possible way extolled the future unification of Georgia with Europe as soon as Europe came to its senses, and GM boasted that it would achieve this.
But not everyone in the Georgian Dream is aware of their party's increasingly complicated pro-European posturing. "Personally, I don't want to be part of the EU so that they tell us what to do," Razmadze said. "I now want the EU to collapse, just as the Soviet Union collapsed, because the EU is against us."
Four or five men sat silently along the wall in Razmadze's large office throughout the interview at the Gori City Council. They were all heavily built, wearing black trousers and black T-shirts. Contrary to the invariable politeness typical of Georgians, none of them introduced themselves or shook hands with the visitor. At the end of the meeting, one of the men approached Razmadze and whispered something in his ear. Razmadze either did not hear his words, or decided to add a new idea to the narrative of his party, where everything is turned upside down. "The reason we are always afraid of joining the EU is that we know it is full of KGB agents," he said.
During my March trip to Tbilisi, I walked along Rustaveli Avenue to watch the nightly march of anti-government demonstrators. One group formed in front of the national broadcasting center around eight-thirty in the evening, and they spent the next half hour chanting, shouting about issues that, in their opinion, the state media should cover, but do not cover. They then walked along Rustaveli Avenue to join the second group of protesters in front of the parliament building. After the police blocked this section of the road to traffic, the demonstrators began chanting again, accompanying their chants with blows to kettles and waving Georgian flags.
At the peak of the protests, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered on Rustaveli Avenue, but that evening, according to my calculations, there were about 600 people. Instead of dense lines of security forces in riot gear, there were about three dozen police officers who were supposed to be watching the demonstrators, but instead they were killing time by staring at their mobile phones. Watching this serene scene, one young demonstrator, a college student, became despondent. "The regime believes that we no longer pose any threat," he said, "that if we do nothing and just wait, we will eventually lose hope and stop coming."
But, according to this student, such marches are no longer being held in order to force the "Georgian Dream" to change, it is hopeless. The goal now is to play to an international audience. "We need to remind the West, and especially the United States, that we are still here, that we are part of their world and need their help," said this demonstrator.
But even then, it seemed like a pipe dream. On the day President Trump took office in late January, he began destroying the Agency for International Development, the main American government agency that funds social security programs in Georgia. The demise of this agency was preceded by the departure of even more foreign NGOs due to the strict restrictions of the "Russian law". Most likely, no help will come from the European Union. Since the Georgian government has dramatically turned the tide of the game by postponing its EU membership bid, there is nothing European capitals can do to increase their pressure right now.
In July of this year, I returned to Georgia and saw that the situation there had deteriorated further. Parliament has approved a bill banning any political organization that the government considers "hostile." Groups of anti-government demonstrators continued to march along Rustaveli Avenue every evening, but there were even fewer demonstrators. Perhaps the protesters were scared by the new facial recognition cameras installed along the entire avenue. The Georgian service of the Voice of America, which is the main source of impartial news from abroad, is facing closure. To make matters worse, the Trump administration has just imposed 10 percent tariffs on all its goods, even though Georgia's gross domestic product ranks 106th in the world.,
About a kilometer from the parliament building is Freedom Square, where George W. Bush's triumphant speech took place in 2005. At the end of his speech, Bush spoke grandiloquently: "We live in historical times when freedom is coming from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, to the Persian Gulf and even further. When you see how free people gather in such squares all over the world, waving the flags of their countries and demanding their God-given rights, you can be proud of it. They are inspired by your example, and they hope for your success."
* An extremist community banned in Russia.
**An undesirable organization in Russia.
***Recognized in Russia as a foreign media agent.
