Filenews 10 March 2023
By Therese Raphael
After two nights of violent clashes with riot police in Tbilisi, Georgian protesters won victory on Thursday when the ruling party in Georgia announced it was withdrawing its crackdown on civil society and media groups that sparked the protests. The government, however, refused to renounce the bill from a position of principle, many demonstrators were imprisoned and the opposition parties are rightly concerned that this is only the beginning of a weakening of democratic freedoms.
The scenes in Tbilisi are very similar to those of the 2014 Maidan Uprising, when Kiev was filled with Ukrainians demonstrating against President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to abandon the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement, seeking closer ties with Russia.
Georgia's fragile democracy — one of the few staunch U.S. and European allies in the region until recently — is now facing a similarly dangerous time. Georgia's path to the West, like Ukraine's, is a path that Putin is determined to prevent.
A story that begins in 2008
The irony of Georgia's misery today is that Putin's campaign in Ukraine can be said to have actually begun when he found the pretext to launch an invasion of Georgian territory in 2008 on behalf of the separatists in the self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The war resulted in the brutal ethnic cleansing of Georgians in these areas and a strategic victory for Putin, whose forces currently occupy about 20% of Georgia's territory. The Russian president also used it as a model for the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the harbinger of invasions of Ukraine's Donbass region and last year's full-scale invasion.
The recent history of U.S. and European involvement in the strategic region of the South Caucasus has been a story of intermittent attention, lack of clear strategy, and declining influence. This enabled Putin to open new fronts in his hybrid warfare in order to consolidate Russian power in the region. Immediately after Putin's invasion of Georgia, Barack Obama came to power promising a "restart" of Russian-American relations, reinforcing a sense of geostrategic vacuum in Georgia, which continued during the Trump years.
The small size of the South Caucasus is inversely proportional to its strategic importance. It is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, a bridge between the Black and Caspian Seas and a key transit route for gas and oil. Strong democracies there can be a bulwark against Islamic radicalism, but also against Russian revanchism. Right now, the people that the West would most like to see there are in trouble.
Georgians have often taken to the streets to defend their democracy and the western direction of the country in the post-Soviet era. They did so even after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The recent protests were sparked by a draft law requiring non-governmental organisations and media outlets with more than 20% foreign funding to register as 'foreign agents', with severe penalties for those who refuse. Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili had threatened to veto the bill, which was backed by the ruling Georgian Dream party.
The law "monkeys" an equivalent that was passed in Russia in 2012 to severely restrict human rights, the media and civil society organizations. Many of them were closed. In Georgia, the law demonstrates the true "colors" of a government that has often declared itself pro-Western, when in fact it makes "loves" to Putin.
Alarm bell
The fact that the Georgian government has taken this turn should sound the alarm in the West. Georgia's post-Soviet trajectory sometimes had its zigzags, but it has been largely defined by the pro-Western direction that began in the early 1990s under the late President Eduard Shevardnadze. George W. Bush Jr. had called Georgia a "beacon of freedom" (the road leading to Tbilisi from the city's airport bears his name).
During the nine-year presidency of the Mikheil Saakashvili, from 2004 to 2013, Georgia moved to closer ties with the West. The US has concluded a 'Strategic Partnership' agreement with it. The EU concluded an association agreement in 2014, as well as a free trade agreement. Georgia passed a constitutional amendment that sets as a national goal to move towards "full integration" into the EU and NATO" (something the foreign agents law directly contradicts). Her membership of the two organizations is always a long way off, much to the dismay of many Georgians, yet the direction of travel seemed clear.
While the vast majority of Georgian citizens are strongly pro-Western, the government is increasingly turning to Moscow under the guidance of the dark billionaire founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili. Prime Minister for about a year since 2012, Ivanishvili currently has no official role and has repeatedly denied that he unofficially runs Georgia. But few in the West doubt its de facto control over key state institutions, the judiciary and the security services. In 2020, a group of members of the U.S. Congress bluntly declared him "a close ally of Putin and involved in destabilizing Georgia on behalf of Russia."
Meanwhile, 55-year-old former President Saakashvili, who had been in Ukraine in exile and imprisoned in Georgia after his return, is currently on hunger strike and in poor health, with doctors saying he was tortured during the period of his detention.
Georgia is not the only part of the strategically important South Caucasus that is being destabilised with the active help or consent of Russia. Another democracy and ally of the West - Armenia - has found itself vulnerable to existential dangers. Some 120,000 Armenians have suffered a bitter months-long blockade in Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed enclave in Azerbaijan inhabited by Armenians, with Russia refusing to intervene despite its security pact with Armenia and the peace role the Russians are set to play along the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting this enclave to Armenia.
Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, occupied much of the land around Nagorno-Karabakh in a 2020 war and now wants to form a corridor through Armenia that connects Azerbaijan directly with Turkey to the south. While the world is distracted with other issues, there are concerns that Azerbaijan will use its growing influence to push Armenians out of Nagorno-Karabakh and gain more territory. Georgia is a vital regional ally and trading partner for Armenia.
As the two recent nights of protests and clashes show, Georgians have developed a habit of democracy and a disposition to free expression that will not disappear without a fight. However, the withdrawn bill has provided a strong indication of the ruling party's intentions and suggests that more similar ones will follow. Putin wants to ensure that Georgia's "Maidan" moment does not end as in Ukraine, with the capitulation of a pro-Russian government.
