Georgia a Political Football Between Russia and the West

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the animus against Russia in western countries resulted in rewriting some recent history. One of these narratives, which often goes unchallenged, claims that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. But that’s not the whole story.

Here’s what really happened: following the breakup of the Soviet Union, former republics like Georgia gained their independence. But within this new sovereign state were two regions inhabited by non-Georgians, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, who then successfully seceded from Georgia. They became so-called de facto republics. 

Georgia refused to accept this, and in August 2008 then President Mikheil Saakashvili, launched an attack on South Ossetia. Tskhinvali called for Russian help. The Russians then moved into South Ossetia and routed the Georgians. Both separatist entities remain outside Tbilisi’s control. As for Saakashvili, several criminal cases were later brought against him, and he is serving a six-year prison term since 2021.

Why bring all this up? Because Georgia, strategically located in the Caucasus with a Black Sea coast, and bordering Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, remains a volatile country and a geopolitical football between Russia and the West.

Georgia is, to use political scientist Samuel Huntington’s term in his “clash of civilizations” thesis, a “torn” country, that is, one that is seeking to affiliate with another civilization.

Georgians are overwhelmingly Orthodox Christians, and so historically they have been culturally allied with Orthodox Russia, especially given historical conflicts with Muslim empires. The Ottoman Turks and Persians at one time even partitioned the country between them.   

According to Huntington, a torn country must meet three requirements to redefine its civilizational identity. Its political and economic elite must support the move. Second, the public must be willing to accept the redefinition. Third, the elites of the civilization that the torn country is trying to join – in this case, the “Western” one -- must accept the country.

Membership in the European Union and NATO is enshrined in Gorgia’s constitution and largely supported by the country’s population. But Brussels urged Tbilisi to first implement judicial and electoral reforms, improve press freedom, and curtail the power of oligarchs. In other words, become “western.”

This has led to internal turmoil. Georgia currently has a presidential system, with separate elections for the executive and legislative branches. Salome Zurabishvili was elected president in 2018 with the support of billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili’s ruling pro-Moscow Georgian Dream party, which has been in power since 2012, winning three consecutive elections.

But a rift emerged between Zurabishvili and the party, as she tried to assume an independent political role, vetoing several draft laws she said were eroding Georgia’s democracy. In August and September 2023 Zurabishvili travelled to Brussels, Paris, and Berlin to ask her French and German counterparts to support putting Georgia on the formal path to EU membership. Georgia has been granted EU candidate status.

In turn, last October 18, the pro-Russian lawmakers attempted to remove her from office. Party chairman Irakli Kobakhidze (now the country’s prime minister) called on the president to step down, saying she was “completely deprived of political and moral legitimacy.”

As well, Georgia’s constitutional court ruled that she had violated the constitution by making foreign trips to lobby for Georgian membership in the EU without the government’s permission.

“No-one could impede me on the road leading to the sole goal I have today: to get EU candidate status for Georgia by the end of the year,” she told parliament. Zurabishvili called the proceedings a “farce” and suggested that they had been instigated by Russia, which sought “the destabilisation of the Black Sea region.”

She survived when the MPs only gathered 86 votes of the 100 needed to oust Zurabishvili, well short of the two-thirds majority required. She is Georgia’s last directly elected president, as the country will transition to a parliamentary form of government. The next president will be elected by a 300-member electoral college.

In April, the government introduced a new “foreign agents” bill, leading to mass demonstrations. NGOs and independent media that receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from foreign donors would have to register as organisations “bearing the interests of a foreign power.” They would also be monitored by the Justice Ministry and could be forced to share sensitive information or face hefty fines of up to $12,850.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused NGOs of attempting to stage revolutions in Georgia and of attacking the Georgian Orthodox Church. Ivanishvili accused the West of trying to use Georgians as “cannon fodder” in a confrontation with Russia. The party even glorifies Joseph Stalin, who was a Georgian.

“The Georgian people want a European future for their country,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the “cabinet” of the EU, posted on X. “Georgia is at a crossroads.” But the bill was passed May 14.

As Georgian Dream leaders become more hostile to the U.S. and turn to repressive laws to help maintain their power, Georgians are calling for the West to impose sanctions on government leaders before elections this fall.

As for Saakashvili, in a 2023 interview from detention by the German news agency Deutsche Welle, he contended that “Georgia will be in NATO as soon as we get rid of the pro-Russian government and the Russian oligarch loses power.”