There has been a lot of debate about what the future holds for Europe and its neighborhood if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine succeeds. We already know at least part of the answer, because it is happening in Georgia.
This is the small Caucasus nation where Russian President Vladimir Putin first made clear he was willing to use force to reimpose a Russian sphere of control and influence. How that war began remains controversial, and I will get to the question later. What happened since should not be.
On Monday evening, Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Georgian businessman who made his billions in Russia, gave a speech in which he accused a “global party of war” of trying to block his nation from asserting its freedom and sovereignty.
This is the same global party of war that used civil society non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to foment Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution, said Ivanishvili, who now runs his native nation from an unelected position as chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party. The uprising brought to power what he described as a puppet government that steeped the nation in crime and repression, and then forced Georgia into war with Russia in 2008. Later, this ill-defined global conspiracy forced Ukraine into wars with Moscow in 2014 and 2022.
Now, Ivanishvili said in his speech, those same people were trying to unseat his government and impose foreign values such as LGBTQ+ rights, because he refuses to open a second front against Russia. The NGOs now need to be dealt with, Ivanishvili said, while members of the government of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili — already in jail on what his lawyers say were trumped-up charges — should be prosecuted for unspecified crimes.
This was, as senior fellow at Carnegie Europe Thomas de Waal put it on Tuesday, “an extremely dangerous speech that will chill anyone who cares about Georgia to the bone.”
It also amounted to a public declaration by Ivanishvili that he has sided with Moscow in its confrontation with the West, using the same paranoiac, unhinged language and gaslighting that Russian leaders spout daily.
“It is completely clear that Bidzina Ivanishvili and ‘Georgian Dream’ have changed the foreign policy course from the West to Russia,” a group of 67 current and former Georgian diplomats wrote in a joint letter responding to the speech.
Twice now, Ivanishvili has persuaded the government to propose a foreign agents bill that is very similar to the one Russia uses to suppress any nonprofit that receives grants from outside the nation and does not toe the Kremlin line. Such laws, aimed at suppressing civil society, are the gateway drugs of would-be autocrats, as they look to remove all institutions that could pose a risk to their hold on power.
Georgian Dream dominates the parliament, but backed down from the attempt in March last year, after the bill triggered mass street protests. Russia, not coincidentally, was on the back foot in Ukraine at the time, recovering from two major battlefield defeats and looking stretched as even a regional superpower. Now the government in Tbilisi is trying again, triggering mass protests, as well as formal criticism from Georgia’s Western allies.
The EU has said the law would be incompatible with membership, which opinion polls show about 80 percent of Georgians want. A bipartisan group of US senators expressed their disappointment in a letter, warning that the shift in policy could force the US to impose sanctions.
So what actually happened in Georgia?
Saakashvili, a US-educated lawyer, had indeed worked for an NGO and led the Rose Revolution to power in 2003. The nation was at the time a failed state, much of it controlled by criminal gangs and with three enclaves carved away by pro-Russia separatists. Ivanishvili, recently returned from Russia, gave no sign of opposing the uprising and even bankrolled some of Saakashvili’s reforms. The young new leader, for all his failings, quickly retrieved one lost territory, radically reduced corruption, collected taxes and left behind a functioning, state.
It was not until 2008 that the two men became enemies. NATO had just said “no” to membership plans for Georgia and Ukraine, but offered a long-term promise that trespassed on what Putin saw as his backyard. The Russian military began to prepare fuel depots and rail infrastructure in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, its two remaining Georgian enclaves. When it started feeding unmarked tanks and soldiers into South Ossetia, in August, Saakashvili attempted a disastrous pre-emptive strike.
Saakashvili became the first Georgian leader to step down and allow a peaceful transfer of power when he lost elections in 2012, and for a while, it seemed Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream might offer a less impetuous path to the EU and NATO integration that the vast majority of the nation wanted, as well as more protections for the rule of law, but the nation has instead been slipping on indices for corruption and freedom. Opponents of the government have been beaten or shot at.
This time when Ivanishvili pushed for the repressive NGO law, Russia was on the offensive in Ukraine. Rather than back down again in the face of widespread demonstrations, Ivanishvili has now stepped out of the shadows to claim the foreign agents law as his own and the West as his enemy.
In doing so, Georgia’s strongman is flying in the face of what most of the population want. The result is I have no idea how this would play out, but the impact of Putin’s military success in Ukraine is already clear — it is turning the dreams of Russia’s neighboring populations into nightmares.
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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