Mass protests against Moscow’s interference break out in Georgia

By Roy Landersen
December 16, 2024

A political upheaval is shaking Georgia. The largest demonstrations in the modern history of the country followed the Nov. 28 decision of the increasingly pro-Moscow and authoritarian Georgian Dream government led by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze to shelve preparatory talks on joining the European Union until 2028. Protesters are demanding a rerun of October elections, which they insist were rigged.

Kobakhidze claimed Georgian Dream won a narrow victory, but the four opposition parties refuse to participate in the parliament. The country’s largely ceremonial president, Salome Zourabichvili, has joined protesters face-to-face against riot police, saying Georgians are “rising against the Russian puppetry regime.”

Some 200,000 people, about a sixth of the population of Tbilisi, the capital city, filled the streets near the parliament Dec. 1. Similar sizable protests took place in cities throughout the country. Many chanted, “Georgia! Georgia!” and waved red and white Georgian colors or the blue and gold EU flag.

“We want freedom and we do not want to find ourselves in Russia,” Nika Maghradze, a 21-year-old protester, told Agence France-Presse.

The night before, demonstrations were attacked by riot police with pepper spray, rubber bullets and chemically laced water cannons. Protesters were beaten in the street or in detention.

Protesters have established a camp in the city center, reminiscent of the Maidan protests in Ukraine a decade ago. That popular uprising forced the dictatorial pro-Moscow Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia.

Most of the 3.7 million people in Georgia, a former Soviet republic on the southeast corner of the Black Sea, oppose the growing influence of the Putin regime in Georgian politics. The mostly young demonstrators fear finding themselves under Moscow’s thumb again, as Georgia was under the Stalinist Soviet Union.

Georgian Dream was formed and bankrolled by Bidzina Ivanishvili, who became a multibillionaire capitalist in banking and steel in Russia after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. By far the richest man in Georgia, his party has been in office for 12 years.

The ruling party denounces what Kobakhidze calls a western “global war party.” Some of Georgian Dream’s election posters pictured devastation in Ukraine, playing on fears that Georgia could be next.

When Putin launched his 2022 invasion of Ukraine, 30,000 people turned out in Tbilisi in protest. Opposition to Putin’s war remains widespread.

Russian troops invaded Georgia in 2008 and still remain in two statelets Moscow created, called Abkhazia and South Ossetia.