Pro-EU protests in Georgia as western imperialists plot a new Maidan

Protests have rocked the Georgian capital of Tbilisi for eight days straight, with angry crowds surrounding the parliament building, bearing Jersualem Cross and EU flags and hurling fireworks at police lines. The opposition at the head of the movement denies the legitimacy of the ‘pro-Russian’ Georgian Dream regime. Meanwhile, western politicians lavish praise on the protestors and threaten sanctions, seeing an opportunity to drag Georgia firmly under their sphere of influence – all (naturally) in the name of upholding ‘democracy’.

Like many former Soviet countries, Georgian politics is divided between competing blocs of oligarchs, distinguished only by their degree of subservience to the West. On paper, both Georgian Dream and the opposition (headed by the pro-western liberal United National Movement, ENM) are committed to joining the EU. Georgian Dream even enshrined this objective in the country’s constitution in 2017.

Nevertheless, the rabidly pro-European, right-wing opposition (which ruled from 2003 to 2012) accuses Georgian Dream and its influential founder (Georgia’s richest man), Bidzina Ivanishvili, of being ‘too pro-Russian’ for attempting to mend relations with Moscow following the 2008 war, in which Georgia was soundly defeated.

The question of Georgia’s relations with Russia has erupted into periodic protests outside the parliament building over the past several years. The leadership of these protests is wholly reactionary, consisting of petty-bourgeois nationalists and anti-Russian liberals. Although in these large crowds, there is no doubt a layer of workers drawn in with illusions that EU integration will improve the economic and social problems that plague Georgian society.

Historically, Georgian Dream has always denied allegations of favouring Russia, and asserted its commitment to joining the ‘European Community’ – in a bid to secure western investments. In 2016, then-Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili called the USA “a strategic partner of Georgia and one of the main international guarantors of its sovereignty”. The party even pledged its commitment to joining NATO.

But the current Prime Minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, is charting a different path. He accuses western European leaders and the opposition of belonging to a ‘Global War Party’ that is hellbent on turning Georgia into a new front in the Ukraine War. When that conflict began in 2022, he initially expressed support for Kiev, but has since changed his tune, condemning NATO’s role in provoking the war and accusing Ukraine of trying to drag Georgia into the fray. Relations with Ukraine soured further in February after Georgian authorities seized what they said was a truck loaded with explosives intended for terrorist activity in Russia, a claim the Ukrainians did not outright deny.

This year has also seen deteriorating relations between Georgia and the West. In May, the government passed a ‘foreign agents bill’, which requires non-governmental and media organisations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from outside Georgia to register as bodies “pursuing the interests of a foreign power”. This was aimed at the many foreign NGOs in Georgia, which the government accuses (correctly) of being vectors of western power and influence. Kobakhidze and Ivanishvili both threatened that the main opposition parties could be banned under these laws. Georgian Dream also passed a bill in October that severely limits democratic rights for LGBT people, leaning on backward sentiments to shore up their support.

The opposition decried these new laws, which they called anti-democratic and imitations of Russian legislation. It is rather ironic that the ENM is trying to position itself as a champion of democracy, given its record of viciously repressing protest during its last stint in power. This brutality, coupled with a reactionary economic policy of cuts and privatisations, rampant corruption, and dragging the country into a losing war, is what led to them being booted out in 2012. The unofficial leader of ENM, former President Mikheil Saakashvili, is in jail for abuse of power during his time in office.

Georgian Dream is also a reactionary bourgeois party, and Kobakhidze is a demagogue who frames the geopolitical situation in a crude fashion, claiming the ‘Global War Party’ exists as a literal, Illuminati-style entity. What he presents in the form of a conspiracy theory is nothing more nor less than the encroachment of Western imperialist interests on Georgian affairs.

The question of Georgia’s relations with Russia has erupted into periodic protests / Image: Jelger Groeneveld, Flickr

But we must say, when it comes to his warnings about the danger of provoking Russia – he has a point! The aggressively pro-western policy pursued by the United National Movement led Georgia to the 2008 war, egged on by EU and US imperialists, and ended in a swift defeat and the loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Kobakhidze has clearly looked at the situation in Ukraine and recognises that his interests might be better served by a course correction.

Kobakhidze is also not wrong that efforts are underway from abroad to drag Georgia westwards. This became clear following the October elections, in which Georgian Dream held onto power with over 50 percent of the official vote. Several months prior, opposition forces fragmented into two main blocs, one led by the ENM (Unity – National Movement) and a grouping of smaller parties organised as Coalition for Change. These divisions resulted from petty factionalism rather than any point of political principle, and both blocs presented a functionally identical programme defined exclusively by enthusiasm for the EU and hostility to Moscow. Both received roughly the same vote (10 and 11 percent respectively).

By contrast, Kobakhidze turned his fire on western meddling in Georgian affairs and accused the opposition of risking conflict with Russia. It is not hard to imagine how this message carried the day over a divided opposition.

Afterwards, the opposition accused Georgian Dream of manipulating the vote, though they did not explain how, nor present any proof. They made the same claim in 2020, triggering large protests in the capital. International observers, including the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) agreed there had been vote manipulation but have not released any report and refused to be drawn on whether this materially affected the outcome.

The squabble over the results did not immediately trigger protests. These came a month later, when the European Parliament passed a resolution citing “significant irregularities” in the October vote, claiming they were “neither free nor fair” and should be re-run under international supervision! In other words, the EU did not like the result and is now demanding new elections, presumably until its favoured party wins.

This is a scandalous move, which amounts to an attempt by a foreign body to overturn an election result, in the absence of any hard proof of manipulation. In response, Kobakhidze shelved talks on joining the EU until at least 2028, accusing “some European leaders” of “blackmail”. Despite the ‘outrage’ over this move, the EU had already suspended this process in the Summer, citing the foreign agents bill and new anti-LGBT laws.

Emboldened by their western European allies, the opposition declared the election results null and void, refused to take their seats in parliament, and called for mass protests outside the parliament building. They also accused Georgian Dream of conducting a ‘power grab’ with its plans to change the (largely ceremonial) office of the President from an elected position to one chosen by a government committee.

The current President, Salome Zourabichvili, whose tenure is due to expire in a month, has pushed herself to the forefront of the protest movement, calling Georgian Dream’s win part of a “special Russian operation”, again, with absolutely no evidence of Russian interference. She has already held talks (behind closed doors) with French President Macron, and claims to have consulted Donald Trump about the country’s future. Clearly, she imagines herself as leading a new government.

While actual violence has up to now been limited, the government has clamped down on the protests, alleging the presence of “foreign trainers” and arresting about 100 people, as well as raiding opposition offices. This has all been met with a hail of condemnation from western imperialist institutions. Washington has already imposed a series of travel restrictions on Georgian Dream politicians, and on Saturday, the US Department of State said in a statement:

“By suspending Georgia’s EU accession process, Georgian Dream has rejected the opportunity for closer ties with Europe and made Georgia more vulnerable to the Kremlin… We reiterate our call to the Georgian government to return to its Euro-Atlantic path, transparently investigate all parliamentary election irregularities, and repeal anti-democratic laws that limit freedoms of assembly and expression.”

If you remove the cynical references to democratic rights, the statement can be summed up in this one sentence: “we reiterate our call to the Georgian government to return to its Euro-Atlantic path”. In plain English, this means: we are your bosses and we are telling you to submit to our imperialist domination rather than Russia’s.

British Foreign Minister David Lammy sternly warned that “[t]he shocking scenes of violence towards protestors and journalists by the Georgian authorities are unacceptable and must stop.” He added that the UK would immediately suspend “all programme support to the Georgian government, restrict defence cooperation, and limit engagement with representatives of Georgian Dream government until there is a halt to this move away from European democratic norms and freedoms.” The US and EU are also drawing up a list of possible sanctions to pile pressure on Tbilisi.

We really must pause and admire the brazen hypocrisy of these ladies and gentlemen, who have not issued a single sanction against their genocidal Israeli allies; who sent in state authorities to crush peaceful domestic student protests in solidarity with Gaza; and who enjoy cordial relations with head-chopping despots like the House of Saud.

The likes of Lammy and the EU issue homilies on the rules-based order and democratic values, while nakedly conspiring with the opposition – which was rejected in the elections – to engineer regime change in a sovereign nation. The western press is awash with glowing headlines about the protests in Georgia, where, they say the ‘people’ are fighting for their ‘democratic European dreams’. They conveniently ignore the fact that the opposition was just defeated in an election, which everyone claims was rigged, but which nobody can prove.

We have seen similar manoeuvres this week in Romania, where Calin Georgescu, an anti-NATO, anti-EU, anti-Ukraine war candidate, won the first round of the presidential election, to everyone's surprise. Then, as he was about to win the runoff by a large margin, a court decided to annul the first round. The EU cheered this farce on, as it alleged "Russian influence" had swayed the electorate in the first round.

Here and in Georgia, we see the real value of so-called democratic principles. If the peoples of Eastern Europe – or anywhere else for that matter – happen to elect the ‘wrong’ candidate, from the perspective of western imperialism, then this ‘mistake’ must be undone or else they will be subject to diplomatic strong-arming, colour ‘revolutions’, sanctions or even military intervention.

The whole situation carries echoes of the Euromaidan in Ukraine in 2014 / Image: DrewPavlou, Twitter

The whole situation carries echoes of the Euromaidan in Ukraine in 2014, in which Washington and its allies helped engineer an uprising that removed one oligarch which was seen as not pliable enough and installed a wing of the oligarchy much more closely aligned to their interests. The consequences of this manoeuvre, including a civil war in 2014-15 and the rise of armed neo-Nazi gangs, can be seen today in Ukraine, which has been laid low by years of war, with hundreds of thousands of its people slaughtered in Washington’s proxy war against Russia.

Moscow has for now been circumspect about the situation in Georgia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russia was interfering in Georgian politics, and drew parallels between the current protests in Georgia and the Maidan protests in Ukraine, saying: Georgia is “moving rapidly along the Ukrainian path into the dark abyss”, adding that this would end “very badly”. Even if it is true that Russia is influencing the policy of Georgian Dream, this has not been nearly so explicit as Western support for the opposition.

The situation in Georgia, as with so many other countries in Eastern Europe, is a tragic product of the collapse of the USSR, which opened the floodgates to gangster capitalism, with gangs of oligarchs carving up the remnants of the planned economy for themselves, with the backing of imperialism. What the ‘democratic West’ envisions for Georgia is not ‘freedom’ for its population, but merely to open up the country’s labour and resources for exploitation; and to push back against their main geopolitical rival in the region.

We condemn the rank hypocrisy of the western imperialists, who preach democratic values while maneuvering to place their allies in power over the heads of the people, who risk plunging millions into the hell of war to preserve their control over markets and spheres of interest. A decent existence for the people of the former USSR does not lie under the yoke of western domination, nor that of capitalist Russia, but through completing the great historic tasks begun by the Bolsheviks in 1917.