Georgia is defined by its fight for survival. Lying in the shadow of Russia, Turkey and Iran, it has navigated – not always successfully – between the great powers for centuries, longing for freedom.
The 26 October parliamentary elections were billed as the latest existential chapter in this centuries-old struggle – a choice between returning to the West or sliding further into Russia’s orbit. Instead, it became yet another interlude to Georgia’s political crisis, with high-stakes actors in Moscow, Brussels, and Washington watching on as both sides apparently pull their punches, waiting for one another to make the first mistake.
Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire Georgian Dream founder widely seen as the de facto ruler of the country, claims his party won with 53.9 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile, the opposition – spanning pro-European, reform-minded parties – promptly declared the elections ‘stolen’, pointing to ballot-stuffing, vote buying, and an atmosphere thick with Soviet-style coercion. Crying foul, they have called for an international investigation and demanded new elections, overseen by an independent international electoral body.
If these results are accurate, they suggest nearly every second Georgian might lean pro-Russian: unlikely in a country where 80 per cent of the population supports Euro-Atlantic integration, as the scars of Russia’s brutal 2008 invasion and centuries of oppression cast Moscow as the eternal enemy.
Within 24 hours of the results, then, protests were in full swing with President Salome Zurabishvili joining the crowds gathered before parliament in the capital, Tbilisi. Addressing tens of thousands, she declared that Georgians had become ‘victims of a new form of hybrid warfare, a “special operation”’ – orchestrated, she asserted, ‘by a familiar neighbour’.
Zurabishvili, once hand-picked by Georgian Dream and Ivanishvili in 2020, is now one of their most vocal opponents, particularly since the war in Ukraine and Georgia’s U-turn from the West. Recently, she has emerged as a Joan of Arc figure, with Georgia’s often fragmented opposition rallying under her banner. Yet these initial protests lasted only one day. Instead of the explosion of anger many predicted, demonstrations have instead been vaguely planned to convene once a week every Monday. Two Mondays in since the election day, there are no signs of the protests gaining enough momentum to force the governments hand.
Meanwhile, Georgian Dream has moved to meet Zurabishvili’s challenge head-on, with the Prosecutor-General’s Office launching an investigation after Zurabishvili denounced the election as rife with violations and refused to accept the results. Summoned for questioning, she responded with disdain, advising the Prosecutor’s office to abandon their ‘political vendetta’ – a thinly veiled hint that the Kremlin might be pulling the strings.
Internationally, Georgian Dream’s ‘victory’ was met with skepticism and suspicion by the West. A US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called for a ‘full and impartial investigation’, and pointedly reminded the GD-led government that its relationship with Washington was ‘under review’. The Biden administration has already hit dozens of GD leaders with sanctions, which it hinted was just the start of punitive measures.
With Donald Trump’s comeback, however, there’s more than a glimmer of hope for Georgian Dream and Ivanishvili. Trump’s name inspires something close to reverence among Georgian Dream’s ruling ranks. Rhetoric similarities aside, his reputation as a ‘transactional leader’ gives the party hope: Trump, they believe, will be far more pliable than his ‘liberal democratic’ predecessors. ‘He wrote The Art of the Deal, and Ivanishvili will be keen to cut one with him and his people. Hell, he might even teach them a trick or two himself,’ one of Georgian Dream’s spin doctors boasted to me, claiming that Trump’s return is a godsend for both the party and its billionaire leader.
Across the pond, Brussels responded as firmly as Brussels possibly could: Georgia’s EU accession talks have ground to a halt, with the EU making it clear that democratic backsliding will block any forward movement. Like the US, the EU has withheld funds previously allocated for Tbilisi – a clear message that Georgia’s western alliances are on thin ice.
The EU still holds a trump card: visa-free travel, granted to Georgia in 2017, allowing hundreds of thousands of Georgians to journey freely across Europe. But revoking it risks punishing the Georgian people more than their leaders. Perhaps Brussels missed its moment. ‘We did discuss it – honestly – and maybe we should’ve done it’, confides an EU diplomat over tea. ‘We could have gone with a temporary suspension, making it clear: if Georgia’s democracy recovers, it’s back to business; if not, stay home.’ He shrugs. ‘No one wanted to be the first to pull the trigger. We all looked to Germany – if anyone would make the move, it was them.’
For Georgians, it’s a genuine quo vadis moment
Meanwhile, support for Georgian Dream came from a predictable club of unsavoury backers. In Moscow, former President Dmitry Medvedev – now infamous for his frequent threats to destroy ‘that godforsaken isle of Britain’ – jumped at the chance to weigh in on the ‘wonderful elections in Georgia’ and called for the ‘removal from office and arrest’ of Georgia’s ‘puppet president’.
Elsewhere, in nauseating homage to Soviet traditions, Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Prime Minister, congratulated Georgian Dream on their win a full hour before preliminary results were even announced. He soon arrived in Tbilisi, becoming the first western leader to pay a visit with a clear message: the EU snobs may shun you, but Hungary stands by.
Yet it would be too easy to put this ‘victory’ down solely to vote-rigging shamelessly cheered on by Moscow and its allies. On Orbán’s visit he pointedly commended Georgians on ‘wisely choosing peace over war’ – a slogan at the heart of GD’s campaign. It is a fear-mongering strategy sharpened and tested in places like Orbán’s Hungary and Lukashenko’s Belarus: one side of the blade warns that without GD, the West will drag Georgia into war with Russia; the other suggests that if GD loses and pro-western opposition prevails, Russia might well invade. It’s an effective line in a country where the trauma of 2008 is still fresh. Ivanishvili has yet to publicly volunteer his thoughts on Tolstoy’s War and Peace – unlike Nietzsche, whom he once criticised on Georgian TV for a ‘lack of vision’ – yet his own crude version, ‘War OR Peace’, has likely won him more support than any rigging, proven or suspected, ever could.
So, what comes next? The initial opposition response, though spirited, also indicated that the movement lacks full unity. One coalition party, Ahali, went so far as to request donations of tents for protests to come prompting speculation of a potential Georgian Maidan. But such a prospect is as terrifying to some as it is thrilling to others and is unlikely to have unified support.
Natia Seskuria, Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), warns that the opposition may not be up to the challenge: ‘While the opposition is more united than we’ve seen them before, there’s still a notable lack of vision and long-term planning. There’s not much clarity about their action plan, which could alienate voters who expected a more prepared front.’
While opposition parties are united in their rejection of the election results, there’s no clear roadmap for overturning the outcome or challenging GD’s continued hold on power, and despite widespread frustration, the opposition remains vulnerable to infighting and fragmentation. The opposition has declared it will not enter parliament, but with every day that passes it is not clear how long unity on this position will last.
The West now walks a tightrope. Should it withhold recognition of the elections and risk Georgia’s drift towards Moscow, or accept the results and risk alienating pro-European Georgians? The latter would mean helplessly watching on as Moscow holds sway over a onetime ally, while refusing recognition could push GD closer to Russia, reinforcing Ivanishvili’s narrative that ‘foreign agents’ are scheming to undermine the country – a familiar refrain from Putin’s playbook. An even darker, nightmare-fuel outcome would see GD ‘doing a Lukashenko’ and inviting Kremlin ‘assistance’ – aid that, historically, arrives in the form of Russian soldiers on Russian tanks.
But the options – domestically, at least – are not much better for Ivanishvili either. ‘It is far from a happy end, Ivanishvili leaves the country deeply damaged, with the worst election in more than two decades. Other than prosecuting the opposition, he doesn’t seem to have a real endgame’, argues Professor Hans Gutbrod, a seasoned observer of Georgian politics over the last two decades and himself a Georgian citizen.
For Georgians, it’s a genuine quo vadis moment: whether their European aspirations survive or the country slides irreversibly back under Moscow’s shadow. The clock is ticking. Across the Black Sea, Moldovans headed to the polls to choose between distinctly pro-European and pro-Russian candidates for their next president. Maia Sandu, the pro-Western candidate, won by a razor-thin margin amid allegations of heavy Russian interference. It was an election that Georgians would have been watching closely, hoping to glean any insights for their own existential struggle.
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