Georgia Tries To Escape the Russian Grip.

 

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, on Saturday, May 11. This, one of the largest protests in Georgia's recent history was an expression of revolt against the increasingly pronounced pro-Russian turn of the state ruled from behind by Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Situated in the Caucasus Mountains, Georgia is fighting another battle for its future. A struggle in which the ruling party is dragging the country towards the Russian model, which is always hanging from the North. While the society, especially the youth, is fighting to avoid this and is pulling the country towards Western civilization.

What is the state of the Georgian struggle?

The old, new plan

In March 2023, after two nights of intense protests, Georgia's ruling party "Georgian Dream" announced its unconditional withdrawal from the idea of a law on "foreign agents".

The regulation, which had enraged a large part of Georgian society, would have required media and other NGOs that received more than 20% of their funding from abroad (mainly the European Union and the United States) to register as "agents of foreign influence". It was a twin law to the one adopted by the Russian Federation in 2012 - and no one doubted that the inspiration for applying a similar law in Georgia came from Moscow.

A year later, however, the issue returned like a boomerang, once again triggering massive protests. This time, the Georgian Dream party had no intention of letting go.

Its founder, former prime minister, but de facto most important person in the state - Bidzina Ivanishvilii - defends the decision by saying that "funding NGOs that pretend to help us in fact increases foreign influence and their power," and also that the law is also supposed to protect Georgia from "Western LGBT propaganda."

One might ask - since the Ministry of Finance and the State Revenue Service already have insight into the financing of all institutions in the country, why should they be required to register as "foreign centers"?

The reason is simple - all initiatives and individuals coming from these backgrounds can easily be stigmatized as "agents of foreign powers" according to the letter of the law.

And that this is priceless, sharp ammunition for the internal political fight. Especially useful during the election campaign, and the elections are just around the corner and will take place as early as October. Similar laws exist in other countries, such as the U.S. FARA, but they differ in that they do not equate every instance of receiving foreign funding with being an "agent of influence" of a foreign power.

Why, then, is a society that is one of the most pro-Western in Europe (up to 80% of Georgians express a desire to join the Union) led by a government that shows a clear aversion to the West and at the same time a thinly disguised sympathy for Moscow?

The sin of abandonment

To answer this question, we have to go back at least to 2008. This was the year of 16-day war between Russia and Georgia. Due to the drastic difference in potentials, Georgia lost this war, resulting in the loss of control over the territory of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which come under Moscow's de facto control. The official cassus belli for the Russian invasion was to help the separatists from these regions, but the roots of this decision go much deeper. For the Georgian war was the first episode in Putin's campaign to restore the lost glory of the Russian Federation. And one of the goals of restoring that glow in Putin's Russia was to bring the post-Soviet territories back into Moscow's ironclad sphere of influence. Georgia fell into that category.

That's why, four months earlier at the NATO summit in Bucharest, when alliance officials debated whether to offer the Georgians (and Ukrainians) a road map to NATO membership, a red light went off in the Kremlin. It was a sign that action should be taken. Even though, in the end, nothing came of the Bucharest NATO summit, because the proposal by then US President George Bush to present Georgia and Ukraine with a membership action plan was rejected by Germany and France, as well as by Italy, Hungary and the Benelux countries.

"Germany and France have said they believe that since neither Ukraine nor Georgia is stable enough to enter the program now, a membership plan would be an unnecessary offense to Russia, which firmly opposes the move" - reads the New York Times report from 2008, which gives a good indication of the state of mind of German and French rulers at the time.

Still, Russia's strategic calculation was risky. Militarily, the Russia of 2008 was much weaker than the Russia of January 2022. If the West had come to Georgia's aid, the campaign might have ended in a disastrous defeat. Even if the aid had not been military, the Russians also risked ostracism and sanctions, including their growing economic contacts with Western Europe and America, on which their economy and their entire future rested. Again, it was a very risky decision. But the Kremlin assumed that the West would not react in any way.

And the Kremlin did not miscalculate; that is exactly what happened. The invasion was a complete success. Not only did the West completely disregard Russia and fail to hold it accountable in any way, it "rewarded" Russia with a reset pushed by the Barack Obama administration in 2009. Georgians, whose struggle in 2008 had been motivated primarily by their desire to break out of the post-Soviet world and enter Western structures, felt betrayed and abandoned to their fate.

Moscow, meanwhile, cemented its belief that the West had no desire to "fight for Tbilisi" as long as it received cheap oil and gas from Russian fields. Indeed, this strategy was extremely fruitful until the Kremlin overreached in February 2022.

The effects of the West's tough stance already in the summer of 2008 and the punishment of Moscow for its first manifestations of imperialist policy therefore remain only a subject of alternative history. However, it is not impossible that if we had seen it then, the problem would have been "nipped in the bud" and would not have grown into a "strategic malignant cancer" in the form of the Russian war in Ukraine today. Cancer prevention is always cheaper than chemotherapy.

Russian oligarch at the head of state

But back to Georgia. Disillusionment with the West, but also fear of Russia, which could always return, drove from power the energetic President Mikheil Saakashvili and his United National Movement party, which sought a foothold in the Western vector but lost popularity on a massive scale. It was feared that Saakashvili would lead to a repeat of August 2008, but this time the result would be even worse for Georgia.

In such political conditions Bidzina Ivanishvili appeared. He won the 2012 elections and blamed Saakashvili for the 2008 war. Ivanishvili promised stability and normalization of relations with Russia, but also declared that he would not close Georgia's roads to the West. This is exactly what Georgians wanted.

While such a positioning of Georgia could be considered rational given its geographical location, the subsequent rule of "Georgian Dream" - Ivanishvili's party - was verified by reality.

Many people had concerns about Ivanishvili from the very beginning, and it was hard to deny their basis by looking at the billionaire's past and his way to power and money.

"He emerged from the gangster-ridden Moscow of the 1990s, a city where cunning and cynicism were pathways to success." - Ani Chkhikvadze writes in Foreign Policy.

While Regis Gente of the European Council on Foreign Relations adds, "Ivanishvili is not just any oligarch but one of a small group who in 1996 became part of the Semibankirschina. This group of ‘seven bankers’ – which was, in reality, made up of more than seven people, not all of whom were bankers – financed the re-election of Boris Yeltsin as Russian president”

It is not entirely clear how Ivanishvili made such a spectacular ascent into Boris Yeltsin's inner circle, but the fact is that he suddenly found himself at the top of Russia's ruling elite.

Ivanishvili's support, among others, contributed decisively to Yeltsin's re-election. In return, he and the rest of Semibankirshina made huge profits from the auctions of state companies that Yeltsin's government held in the run-up to the election as part of a stock loan program. This was the period when they went from small businessmen to oligarchs.

Fifteen years later, Ivanishvili is back in Georgia, portraying himself as a staunch patriot and a successful businessman who sold all his Russian assets at market prices before entering Georgian politics.

Meanwhile, as Gente notes: "Boris Berezovsky, who brought Ivanishvili into the Semibankirschina, described him in 2012 as a man who plays “according to the rules set by the Russian government.” The late oligarch observed that Ivanishvili had little difficulty doing business in Russia and that “there are no businessmen in Russia who do not have problems with the government and, at the same time, are not supporters and carriers of its politics"

An anonymous Georgian diplomat says that Ivanishvili was able to continue his narrative of eventually wanting to enter the structures of the European Union or NATO because he knew it was unrealistic (and the Kremlin saw it the same way), while at the same time reassuring a large part of the electorate that had been living, the dream of entering the West.

On the other hand, the thawing of relations with the recent oppressor continued. Georgian-Russian trade has skyrocketed since Ivanishvili came to power, and the value of Georgian exports to Russia has increased twentyfold, from $36 million in 2012 to $650 million in 2023.

Ivanishvili's policies brought the "Georgian Dream" to re-election twice - in 2016 and again in 2020. It has been a period of relative stability for Georgia, although with economic stagnation given the country's low ceiling for development. In the five years before the 2008 war, Georgia grew at an impressive rate of nearly 10% per year. The next two years saw the war and a halt to all growth. This was followed by growth of around 7% in 2010 and 2011. In contrast, the next 8 years of Ivanishvili's party rule, until the pandemic, saw growth averaging 4.4% y/y - far too little to catch up with the developed countries. Only the post-pandemic recovery and the Russo-Ukrainian war years, which benefited the Georgian economy, provided Tbilisi with new growth stimuli and a return to pre-2008 rates. It benefits because Ivanishvili's Georgia is one of the main conduits for Western sanctioned goods to Russia. It is also perhaps the most important destination for Russians wishing to leave Putin's Russia.

The pro-Russian tilt of the Georgian government, despite initial illusions, is now a reality. The Georgian Dream, with Ivanishvili in the background, is expanding its control over government agencies, law enforcement, independent courts, intimidating civil society with a brutal crackdown on protests, and attacking independent media. A symbol of Ivanishvili's authoritarian retreat and the state of democracy in Georgia was the arrest of former President Mikhail Saakashvili, who had previously been sentenced to six years in prison for abuse of power. His supporters and some observers believe that Saakashvili's sentence was politically motivated and aimed at curbing the country's opposition. Western diplomats have also called for his release. It should be noted, however, that Saakashvili's position and popularity are far from those of the first decade of the 21st century.

Clash for the future

But back to the protests. Western governments reacted unequivocally negatively to the attempt to push the law through in 2023. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price made it clear that signing the bill into law would worsen Georgia's relations with the United States. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borell expressed similar sentiments, calling the bill a "very bad development" for the country that could affect its future relations with the EU.

As a result of the protests, as well as Western opposition, Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream shelved the controversial bill. The Union, on the other hand, unexpectedly granted Georgia candidate status in December 2023. With this move, Brussels did not necessarily want to acknowledge the politics of Georgian Dream, but rather to make a proactive turn towards the Caucasus, taking up the gauntlet already thrown down by Russia in 2008. Still, the Union called on the country's leadership to adopt and implement reforms in line with the stated goal of joining the European Union, which is supported by the vast majority of Georgian citizens.

Politicians of the ruling party, of course, show no such intentions, while using the event to demonstrate the effectiveness of their policies. So, having given the supporters of European integration a hard argument in the form of candidate status, they renewed the Russian turn and pulled out of the drawer the law "on foreign agents". The people, mostly of the younger generation, took to the streets again. The flags of Georgia, the European Union and Ukraine, with whose struggle many Georgians identify, dominated the streets of Tbilisi.

The protests, described by some as the largest since Georgia's independence in 1991, were once again violently suppressed by law enforcement. "No to Russian law" and "Yes to Europe" shouted the crowd. Security forces used water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse crowds of demonstrators in the capital, Tbilisi. Protesters said they were violently attacked by groups of men dressed in black in what appeared to be premeditated assaults.

Despite tens of thousands in the streets, the government had no intention of backing down this time. On Tuesday, May 14, the Georgian Dream-controlled parliament passed the law. However, this does not end the struggle, as Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has already announced that she will veto the bill. Yet, Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream will still be able to get their way because the party has a sufficient parliamentary majority to override the president's veto.

So, is Ivanishvili a Kremlin agent? Opinions are divided. There is certainly no shortage of incriminating materials in the files of the FSB and other Russian agencies with which the Russian services can blackmail him and thus control him. On the other hand, he may simply follow the path that has brought him wealth, i.e. the Russian model. As a result, he may gradually transform Georgia's political, legal, and economic landscape into one that is closer to that of Russia, one that suits him and provides him with comfort in power execution. And this means a slide of the country into an autocratic-oligarchic direction, where the country is ruled by a narrow group of a selected "elite". A de facto one-party system. Georgian society senses this, and the law on "foreign agents" is a symbol of opposition, a red line. If it is crossed without consequences and the Georgian Dream wins another re-election, Georgia could move in an irreversible direction, the Russian direction.

Ivanishvili has several strong cards in his hand: first, the societal fear of another Russian invasion; second, the weakness of the Georgian opposition; third, the media and his own apparatchiks; fourth, the relative economic success of the last two years (which depends on trade with Russia and Russians fleeing to Georgia); and fifth, his own financial resources. Suffice it to say that his own wealth, worth more than $6 billion, is equivalent to nearly 1/4 of Georgia's entire GDP.

It's also worth mentioning that while Georgian Dream is pushing through the law on agents, it is also trying to push through the so-called "offshore law", a law that is supposed to allow the transfer of funds and assets from tax havens to Georgia without any unnecessary questions or taxes. The rhetorical question remains who would benefit most from such a law. Moreover, Ivanishvili is convinced that the world is ruled by a "global war party" that wants to consume Georgians and Ukrainians as cannon fodder in the war against Russia.

So Ivanishvili is counting on pushing the controversial bills through early enough that by election time, Georgia's nearly four million people will have forgotten about the issue and will once again succumb to the Georgian Dream propaganda that hits the West and plays the Russian invasion card.

The fragmented opposition, on the other hand, is trying to unite around incumbent President Salome Zourabichvili, although the often unpopular United National Movement is also trying to find a place for itself. What unites the opposition is the demand for a fully proportional system to ensure that power is not concentrated in one hand.

Another skirmish between civilizations

And so, while the Russian-Ukrainian war is the most glaring example of the clash between the Western order, of which the Ukrainians want to be a part, and the Russian order, from which they want to break away, the Georgian matter is no different. The Georgian case resembles the Ukrainian one as the Georgian territories were also the scene of the Russian invasion. Russian troops are also stationed on Georgian soil, since both Abkhazia and South Ossetia are de jure part of Georgia.

However, the country is even further east than Ukraine. Geographically, Georgia is separated from the closest union members, Bulgaria and Romania, by more than 1,000 kilometers of Black Sea waters. This geographic isolation and separation from the European core, to which Georgians are looking for a way in, can create a sense of resignation and support for parties like Ivanishivili's. However, young Georgians are not losing faith and are looking for a better future for themselves and their country.

The political leaders of European countries, as well as the U.S., are not, or should not be, indifferent to such grassroots protests. Granting Georgia candidate status six months ago was a good move, and Europe should follow suit.

Russia likes to project its supposed power, but the truth is that today, with the grueling war in Ukraine, Moscow cannot afford any costly operation in Georgia - military, economic, or subversive. Georgia is therefore the perfect place for Europe to demonstrate the assertiveness that its own people demand of it. To correct the mistake made 16 years ago in Bucharest, when it let Georgia off the hook for fear of upsetting Vladimir Putin. We all know how that ended.

For Europeans, but also for Westerners in general, the attitude of Ukrainians and Georgians should be a reminder of the values on which Western civilization was founded. People are willing to make the highest sacrifices in the name of their beliefs and freedom. In this context, the assumption of some geopolitical realists that the politics of values is romantic and naive is wrong. Yes, the implementation of any strategy must be rooted in hard elements such as military, economy, or geography, but it is ideals and values that ultimately determine what sacrifices people are willing to make. In this context, the attitudes of Georgians or Ukrainians often represent the ethos of Western civilization better than their wealthier Western counterparts, who enjoy the peace won by their ancestors.

Regardless of how the issue of the law on "foreign agents" develops, the key episode of the struggle for Georgia is ahead, and it will be the October elections. Some Georgians are already preparing to act in the streets and take the country out of Russia's increasingly tight grip. This opens up another theater of the clash of civilizations. Will Europe miss it again?

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