Who governs Georgia? The nation is torn between Russia and the West

“That’s the point,” Georgi answers. “Bidzina wants to humiliate society. He is a true authoritarian. The message is simple: I’ll elect my horse, and you’ll suck it up.”

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Recent events in Georgia are grimly familiar. The general election in October saw the pro-Kremlin Georgian Dream win 53.9% of the vote (with 37.7% for the opposition coalition).

The opposition, and international observers, accused Georgian Dream of electoral fraud. Georgian NGO, The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy reported “serious (electoral) violations”, including “intimidation, ballot stuffing, multiple voting, unprecedented levels of voter bribery and expulsion of observers from polling stations”. Other accusations included violence in polling stations, suppression of media, intimidation of opposition voters, compromised voter privacy and so on. The central election commission carried out a partial recount involving about 12% of polling stations and 14% of votes but claimed there wasn’t “a significant change to previously announced official results”. 

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, whom Georgian Dream had previously endorsed but is now firmly anti-government and pro-Western, had declared that the opposition coalition was set to win. “European Georgia is winning with 52% despite attempts to rig elections and without votes from the diaspora,” she tweeted.

Things are so febrile because the election was about far more than just who governs Georgia. It was a test of the country’s democratic health as it sought — theoretically, as far as Georgian Dream was concerned — to join the EU. Brussels had previously warned Tbilisi that a free and fair election was essential to continue its trajectory to membership; it also warned that any fraud could lead to the revocation of Georgia’s visa-free regime within the Schengen Zone.

The government chose fraud. The European Commission said that it could not recommend opening membership talks for the EU “unless Georgia reverts the current course of action which jeopardises its EU path”. Tens of thousands duly hit onto the streets. The Georgian interior minister announced the purchase of several new water cannons in anticipation of more protests over coming weeks.

The government refuses to back down. Nor will the protestors, who believe they are facing a simple choice. In early November, the former prime minister and current opposition leader Giorgi Gakharia laid out the essence of things. “In Georgia, we are connected to Europe through democracy, and to Russia through autocracy,” he told me. “These elections are so important because they are about the clash between the European or Russian orientation of the country, and therefore between these two different political paths.”

Across eastern Europe, the central foreign policy problem (and, given its penetration of their politics, often domestic problem) for many states is Russia. For those who want a better future the choice is exactly what Gakharia laid out: on the one hand, Europe, democracy, and strategic partnerships with the United States; on the other, a future of Kremlin-controlled governments that hoard power, enrich their leaders, and kowtow to Vladimir Putin.

One evening, a few days after Syrian rebels overthrew Bashar al-Assad, I saw a man on Rustaveli, waving the independent Syria flag. “This flag is a token of solidarity between us and the Syrian people,” he told me. “Syrians fought for 12 years to get rid of a brutal dictator backed by the same enemy who seeks to subjugate us here: the regime of Vladimir Putin.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. In 2008, Russian troops rolled into Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions. They have squatted there ever since. But during the election campaign Bidzina said that Georgia provoked the conflict and should apologise to Russia. For a country’s de facto leader to blame his own people for their invasion by a more powerful neighbour is perhaps the most sinister form of political self-abasement I have encountered.

The people were predictably outraged. Georgian Dream tried to row back on the statement, but the damage was done. And the comments were instructive because they show the world the influence Putin has even when he doesn’t invade or kill: he turns leaders into toadies, as surely as he seeks to turn nations into colonies.

And it’s all done under the threat of force. “If you don’t vote for us, the Russians will invade. Georgia will become another Ukraine” was another Georgian Dream election pitch. Exercise freedom of choice and Russia will hurt you: the threat wasn’t even veiled.

Just over a month after the election, on 28 November, the government announced that it had “decided not to bring up the issue of joining the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028”. Until then, protests had been generally calm but at that point they erupted, largely due to provocation from violent riot police, which, like all enforcement arms of an authoritarian state, also began to target journalists.

In the Marriott hotel media centre on Rustaveli, I met Alexander Keshelashvili from the independent Georgian Online publication Publica. He was covering the protests on the night of 28 November, just after the government made its historic announcement. Things were tense but peaceful. He was standing by the side of a building with a few other journalists when a mob of police ran towards them. He felt someone grab him and drag him to the police lines. Then around six to eight of them formed a circle around him and began to beat him. They didn’t even tell him he was under arrest; they just punched and kicked him.

“At first, I thought it was a mistake. I was shouting, ‘I’m a journalist,’ but I heard some bad words regarding my profession, so I knew they had targeted me deliberately.” Alexander was taken to hospital where he was told he had signs of concussion, as well as that the police had broken his nose in several places, for which he needed surgery.

The parallels with Ukraine’s 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution are hard to ignore; and when I spoke to Georgians they agreed. That revolution also began when a pro-Kremlin government (led by President Viktor Yanukovych) decided to turn away from the EU and towards Moscow after Yanukovych reneged on his promise to sign the EU accession agreement and chose instead to join Putin’s Customs Union. The people came onto the streets and did not leave until Yanukovych had fled to Russia.

Walking around Rustaveli, echoes of Maidan were everywhere. Activist civil society is blooming just as it was in Ukraine a decade ago. Protestors are coming together to get organised. Legal assistance is provided to those arrested, first aid facilities are set up.

In truth, anything the protestors can do to increase their collective potency is now a necessity. Just as the Yanukovych government did during the Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution, Bidzina’s government has hired gangs of thugs known as “Titushky” to intimidate and beat up protestors. People were eager to show me videos of them attacking protestors, often women. One evening, I saw a row of home-made shields by the side of the road — planks of wood with handles nailed into them, amateurish parodies of riot police shields — for people to defend themselves the next time the police got violent.

The Titushky have spawned a reaction. One young activist, Tornike Mskhiladze, has set up an anti-Titushky group. “Tbilisi is really small. I know five of the Titushky. Methadone addicts with criminal convictions. After doing this work, police will wipe their convictions. I know how fucked up their lives are. They are the scum of the earth, like the worst people you can imagine. And they beat up women and the press,” he told me.

People, he explained, had begun to feel unsafe at the protests even though they were protesting peacefully. “So I started asking around: who wants to defend our citizens because our police are now working with criminals. We must defend ourselves with our bare hands. Many people joined me. It was spontaneous. It wasn’t like I created a group or anything.”

Shame is an important tool of opposition here. As I walked up to a street protest one evening I saw the police congregating by their vans, almost all wore masks — it was striking sight in a country still theoretically a democracy.

Georgi explained it to me. “In the beginning when police were beating the protestors opposition media would discover their identities from video footage and then go to their parents’ house and ask their mothers what they thought of their sons beating their fellow citizens. Their mothers would often start crying and wailing that their sons would never do this. After that, the police started wearing masks.”

It’s clear that that protestors will not be intimidated off the streets. But the question remains: where does this all go politically? To try to answer it I speak to Giga Bokeria, the leader of the opposition Federalists Party, and a man who likes to chain smoke and discuss Winston Churchill. “I want to be clear,” he says, puffing away. “When we talk about the moving toward the EU here, we are not talking about it as an institution only. It’s about an overall civilisational choice.”

This is why, he explains, the protests intensified after 28 November. “For one month the protests were purely about elections. After the [EU] statement all the fears about Georgian Dream, which were clear to some, but maybe not so clear to others, or they didn’t want it to see it, were confirmed.”

This includes many Georgian Dream supporters, who didn’t think the government would turn away from the EU. Now they are out on the streets. “You have to understand,” he says, “that for Bidzina it’s not about four years in power, it’s about eternity in power for the status quo that he creates. And for that he needs to break the will of society.”

Will the government get more violent? Could they start open firing on the people? Most Georgians I know dismiss this. This is not Ukraine or Russia, is the response I get. Bokeria, though, is more circumspect. “I can’t exclude that unfortunately. And it’s good you mentioned Maidan. There are a lot of parallels. It’s not led by any political group; indeed, it’s completely decentralised, but now we see first signs of self-organisation: every day different groups organise demonstration in different locations, and they coordinate themselves.”

He continues: “Now, I didn’t mention Maidan because government propaganda is referencing it to frighten people, to make them think that if they continue to resist there will be bloodshed and that it will be followed by war from Russia. But it’s our duty as citizens of this country to do what we can to defend our sovereignty and individual liberty.”

Beyond that, though, is the inescapable engine of geopolitics. Georgia sits at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a transit hub for trade and energy between Europe and Asia, while its position along the Black Sea and proximity to Russia, Turkey, and the Middle East further amplify its importance. If you want to counter Russian influence in the Caucasus region, you need Tbilisi. Conversely, if Russia can erode its democratic institutions, it gains greater leverage over the entire region.

The lesson of Georgia is as clear and unignorable as that of Ukraine. You can never be Putin’s ally: you either stand up to him or become his serf. Georgia as well as Ukraine, as well as Israel and Taiwan, are all now frontlines of the West. Their people are battling to uphold the systems we built. We help them in their fight, for our sakes as much as theirs.

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