Pro-Putin faction ‘at war’ in Georgia

Georgia is bracing for a repeat showdown between the Moscow-leaning Georgian Dream ruling party and a grassroots pro-Western protest movement, as the two sides grapple over the geopolitical trajectory of the small but strategically vital South Caucasus nation.

Several weeks of protest came to a head in the streets of the capital Tbilisi on Tuesday when the Georgian Dream-dominated parliament approved the third and final reading of its “foreign agent” law, under which media or civil society groups receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad will have to register as “organizations serving the interests of a foreign power” or face fines.

The legislation is akin to that enacted in Russia in 2012, which has allowed President Vladimir Putin to further choke domestic dissent. It is also similar to legislation tabled in Hungary, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kyrgyzstan, and the self-declared breakaway Georgian Abkhazian Republic; all places where illiberal political leaders have been closely engaged with or directed by the Kremlin.

Lawmakers voted 84 to 30 to back what opponents have dubbed the “Russian Law,” prompting clashes both inside the chamber of Georgia’s imposing parliament building and in the streets surrounding it.

The government says the measure is required to push back against malign foreign influence. Protesters say it is intended to muzzle the opposition and cement the power of Georgian Dream and its chief, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Parliament now has 10 days to submit the bill to President Salome Zourabichvili, who has committed to vetoing it within the two-week window constitutionally allowed.

Stephen Jones, the director of Harvard University’s Georgian studies program, told a Chatham House think tank event this week that the ruling party was “at war with Georgian society” even before the third reading of the bill on Tuesday.

As May turns to June, the ancient city of Tbilisi may play host to an inflammatory final showdown.

“It’s basically a clash of wills,” Natalie Sabanadze, a senior research fellow at Chatham House and the former head of Georgia’s mission to the European Union (EU), told Newsweek.

“People are not going to back down,” she added. “There is increasingly brutal treatment of protesters, which only feeds into greater anger. So then, we’re facing serious escalation of the crisis.”

In Russia’s Shadow

Independent Georgia emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union in 1991 but, as across the rest of the former Eastern Bloc, Russian influence has proved obstinate.

The new century saw the pro-Western Rose Revolution in 2003 but also the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, in which the Kremlin cemented its puppet separatist allies in the northern Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russian forces still occupy these areas, representing some 20 percent of the country.

Ivanishvili established Georgian Dream in 2012 and won majorities in the 2012, 2016, and 2020 general elections, taking advantage of the fractured pro-Western political sphere.

Though publicly committed to EU membership—an ambition supported by the majority of Georgians—Georgian Dream has drifted closer to the Kremlin since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Russians have crossed into Georgia while fleeing President Vladimir Putin’s mobilization orders, piquing long-held fears of Russification.

Georgian Dream’s first attempt to introduce its foreign agent law in 2023 was defeated by mass protests. The government withdrew the legislation and survived the turmoil. Its reintroduction earlier this year fired the starting gun for a clash that many in the opposition see as existential.

“On the opposition side to this law, not just political but overall, people are making it very clear that no version of this law belongs in this country,” Katie Shoshiashvili—a senior corruption researcher at Transparency International Georgia—told Newsweek.

“No amendments will be accepted, only the withdrawal of the law,” she said. “The protests, in the beginning, started with the demand to withdraw this law. It went on this way for a while. But now, protesters are calling the government the Russian regime, and they indicate that they want the end of Russian influence in Georgia.”

The Kremlin has tried to keep public distance from the evolving chaos, broadly supporting Georgian Dream while criticizing Western appeals for the Tbilisi government to withdraw the legislation.

“We see an unveiled intervention in the internal affairs of Georgia from the outside,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. “This is an internal matter of Georgia, we do not want to interfere there in any way.”

The extent of Russian involvement is debatable, but Shoshiashvili said the “Kremlin playbook” has been influencing Georgian Dream for several years.

The government has waged an information war against its domestic opponents, sought to weaponize issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, and demonized Western powers. Since the protests re-erupted, security services have also been accused of harassing and beating opposition leaders.

A Seismic Year

The bruised opposition has eyes on the October parliamentary election, which they believe could deliver a crushing defeat for Georgian Dream. The pro-Western sphere has long been fragmented, but there are hopes that renewed mass anti-government action will re-forge much-needed unity.

“One unintended consequence of all this for Georgian Dream is that they’re going to end up with the toughest election in their lifetime if this bill passes,” Alexandre Crevaux-Asatiani—the international spokesperson and deputy director for foreign affairs for Georgia’s United National Movement opposition party—told Newsweek.

“There’s no amount of repression you can do to steer the election enough your way,” he added. “You cannot just run a campaign based on repression, especially in a country like Georgia, which is a such a small country with everyone knowing each other. You cannot end up with a Russia-style crackdown.”

But with the capital paralyzed by protests, October seems a long way away.

“It’s actually very hard to predict what will be the situation by October,” Sabanadze said. “If there is no compromise, if there is nothing, I can see the protests growing from ‘No to Russian Law’ to ‘no to the government,'” she added.

There appears little appetite for compromise among the protesters, who feel betrayed by the reintroduction of a bill they thought had been killed in 2023. The EU has called for the law to be withdrawn rather than amended, while U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Jim O’Brien warned of “consequences if the law were implemented as it now stands.”

Newsweek has contacted the Georgian embassy in Washington, D.C., by email to request comment.

“It’s not about a compromise,” Crevaux-Asatiani said. “We don’t want to compromise on an authoritarian bill that risks stifling opposing voices and civil society for years to come.”

He added that Western nations “have been misled or been lied to by Georgian Dream.”

Georgians marching against the bill are doing so in pursuit of a European and trans-Atlantic future, the flags of the EU and NATO commonly seen waving above crowds and cloaking the protesters.

Brussels was slow to issue a statement on parliament’s approval of the legislation on Tuesday, but its eventual response “encourages people that the institution that we’re striving toward for so long and so strongly is standing with the Georgian people,” Shoshiashvili said.

O’Brien has hinted at the possibility of sanctions if the law is enacted.

“People in Georgia expect tangible actions,” Shoshiashvili added. “And many on the streets of Tbilisi obviously are calling for sanctions.”

For now, Georgians are bracing for the next flash point.

“It’s in everyone’s interest for the fight to be prolonged, to give everyone more of a chance to analyze everything correctly, to give the Europeans and Americans a chance to analyze the situation correctly, and for everyone to come up with a plan,” Crevaux-Asatiani said.

“What we need to do is show the strong protests of the Georgian people and all of the real-life consequences that Georgian Dream will experience if the bill passes,” he said. “We’re talking about massive strikes, we’re talking about full opposition unity.”

Escalation could come suddenly, and security forces have already shown willingness to use violence to break up demonstrations.

“So far, the protests have been very peaceful,” Sabanadze said. “Not a single Molotov, no burning cars, no property damaged. And it’s really remarkable because those protests have been going for a month and there are thousands of people out there.”

“However, you can definitely have some sort of violence provoked, especially as anger grows,” she added, whether through protesters fighting with police or by groups of pro-government Titushky, the name given to mercenary agents in Ukraine who supported security services and attacked protesters during the Maidan Revolution in 2013 and 2014.

“We don’t have an interest in violence,” Crevaux-Asatiani said. “What we want is a European future. The moment we start talking about ‘war,’ you might as well just say goodbye to that European future.”