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Georgia

FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

"Ukraine Will Win The War" — Georgia's President Tries To Quell Doubts From Kyiv

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has revealed fault lines in Georgia. Many in the country strongly condemn Russia, but some pro-Russian voices have positioned the country as a Kremlin ally. In an exclusive interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Georgian President Salomé Zourabichvili draws the line on what side of history her country will ultimately stand.

TBLISI — The capital of Georgia feels like a Ukrainian city. Tbilisi is covered not only with Ukrainian flags but also with slogans in support of Kyiv, which has been facing down an invasion from the two country's respective Russian neighbor.

You can feel the solidarity even more strongly when speaking with the residents of the Georgian capital. They all admire the Ukrainian resistance, help Ukrainian refugees, and can recite by heart the names of Georgian volunteer soldiers who have lost their lives fighting for Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. They also often apologize for the Georgian government and Parliament, which have lately been drifting openly towards Russia’s side.

The Customs Office reports that the volume of trade between Georgia and Russia has increased by almost 22% since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Georgia is also considered one of the countries that is helping Russia to evade Western sanctions, and recently Moscow and Tbilisi have resumed direct flights between the two countries, which, according to Georgia’s Prime Minister, Irakli Garibashvili, is "nothing unusual".

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These flights are being carried out by Azimuth Airlines, which also operates flights to the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, so this move cannot be called "friendly" towards Ukraine. Reportedly, the Office of the President of Ukraine even considered implementing sanctions against the Georgian officials responsible for adopting this decision.

The arrest two years ago of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian President from 2004-2013, does not speak well of official Georgian-Ukrainian relations either. Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, has on several occasions called for the former Georgian leader to be allowed to go abroad for medical treatment.

These are the reasons why Ukrainska Pravda decided to speak with Salomé Zourabichvili, the President of Georgia. The daughter of Georgian political emigrants, she built a brilliant diplomatic career in France.

In 2004, after Saakashvili was elected president of Georgia, she became the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Yet, in 2005 Zourabichvili turned strongly against Saakashvili. She won the presidential elections in Georgia in 2018 thanks to the support of Bidzina Ivanishvili, one of the main Georgian oligarchs and a former leader of the Georgian Dream political party.

In an interview for Ukrainska Pravda, Zourabishvili reflects on the future of Georgia’s European integration and on Saakashvili’s fate, and reveals why she has not visited Ukraine and whether Georgia is prepared to use military means to reclaim its Russian-occupied territories.

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Red Flags, Blue Flags: Why The Georgia Uprising Makes Moscow So Nervous

Protesters in Georgia blocked the adoption of a Russian-inspired "foreign agents" law, leading to threats from the Kremlin. Writing for La Stampa, Georgia-born political scientist Nona Mikhelidze explains why the events put Moscow on edge.

-Analysis-

Protests erupted in Georgia last week over the government's efforts to adopt a “foreign agents” law, a Russian-inspired measure which would require NGOs and independent media who receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to declare themselves as foreign agents.

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Since a similar law was enacted in Russia, hundreds of civil society and activist groups have ceased their activities, including renowned human rights organization Memorial, a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner, which Russian authorities shut down in 2021.

Other organizations working on human rights, environment, election monitoring and anti-corruption have also ceased their activities, with many forced to close to avoid being labeled as foreign agents or because they couldn't take on the heavy fines imposed for not complying with the strict and arbitrary requirements of the law.

Tens of thousands gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, carrying red Georgian and blue European Union flags and chanting slogans such as “No to the Russian law” and “We are Europe.” Among the protesters were also Russian emigrants who fled their country after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Some were also seen holding signs reading: “I am from Russia! I had to flee because of the law on foreign agents! Georgians, fight!”

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Calling Georgia: Time For Russia’s Ambivalent Neighbor To Pick A Side

Unlike other neighbors in the region, leading political figures in Georgia have refrained from officially denouncing Russia's invasion. From Joseph Stalin's birthplace, it's a complicated relationship. But winding up on the wrong side of history has its consequences.

-Analysis-

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili declared last week that his nation stands in solidarity with Ukraine in its opposition to Russian aggression, and will not allow its territory to be used to circumvent the sanctions imposed against Russia.

“Unfortunately, we Georgians, Moldovans, and Ukrainians have faced this many times before,” said the 46-year-old member of the ruling Georgian Dream party, recalling Moscow’s assault in 2008 in the disputed regions that wound up annexed by pro-Russian factions. “We saw Russian tanks destroying Georgian villages and Russian planes bombing our hopes for a better future. We witnessed the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people from their ancestral homes and saw those who fled massacres and ethnic cleansing shelter in cold basements with their children and loved ones for months and years."

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The statement was clear, strong and specific — it was also eight months late.

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When Mom Believes Putin: A Russian Family Torn Apart Over Ukraine Invasion

Sisters Rante and Satu Vodich fled Russia because they could no longer bear to live under Putin — but their mother believes state propaganda about the war. Her daughters are building a new life for themselves in Georgia.

TBILISI — On a gloomy afternoon in May, Rante Vodich gets the keys to her new home. A week earlier, the 27-year-old found this wooden shed in Tbilisi, with a corrugated iron roof and ramshackle bathroom. The shed next door houses an old bed covered in dust. Vodich refers to the place as a “studio” and pays $300 per month in rent. She says finding the studio is the best thing that’s happened to her since she came to Georgia. It is her hope for the future.

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Her younger sister Satu Vodich is around 400 kilometers further west, in the city of Batumi on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, surrounded by Russian tourists, Ukrainian flags, skyscrapers with sea views and the run-down homes of local residents.

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Geopolitics
Gregor Schwung

In Georgia, Fears Of Being Back On Putin's Hit List

Putin has not forgotten about the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, which wants to decide in July whether to join Russia. People here still remember when the Russian army invaded while the West looked on. And there is growing worry that this could soon happen again.

ERGNETI — Every time Russian troops exercise in South Ossetia, people in this Georgian border village hear the artillery. The aftershock reverberations are already causing the stones in Lia Khlachidze’s house to crumble off the wall. She lives in Ergneti, only about 100 meters as the crow flies from the demarcation line.

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The 69-year-old is standing in her cellar, leafing through a book until she finds a particular page. On it is the footprint of a Russian soldier. “In 2008, Russia invaded here and burned and devastated everything,” Lia says. “They didn’t want us to come back.”

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Geopolitics
Anna Akage

Greater Russia? Four Scenarios For Putin’s Expansionist Ambitions

A mind map of the Russian leader’s possible plans to increase his influence, and expand his territory.

Vladimir Putin has always had his eye on the neighborhood.

In Georgia, the border with Russia has effectively been controlled by Moscow’s FSB security services since 2008. Washington this week accused Russian agents of recruiting pro-Kremlin Ukrainian operatives to take over the government in Kyiv and cooperate with a Russian occupying force. Meanwhile, all of Belarus has been on a short leash for two decades.

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Georgia
Lucia Sgueglia <div style=

Erdogan's Purge Moves Next Door To Georgia <div></div>

TBILISI — The Georgian capital is built upon a hill, sandwiched in the midst of towering peaks. The same can be said about this country, wedged between powerful regional neighbors. As Georgia's economy and aspirations rise, Tbilisi's growing middle class is flocking to private schools to educate its children. There's just one problem: some of them belong to the Hizmet movement of exiled Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen.

Georgia, a former Soviet republic, lies strategically between the Caucasus and the Black Sea. Its leaders have long dreamed of joining the European Union and NATO, but its ambitions are checked by two prominent neighbors: Russia (which invaded in 2008) to the north, and to the south, its largest trading partner, Turkey.

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blog

Extra! Zoo Animals Escape After Georgian Floods

At least 24 people are still missing after severe flooding in Georgia's capital Tbilisi that left at least 12 people dead.

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Eurovision Contestants 2015: Georgia

Nina Sublatti, Georgia’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, wrote the song she will perform, “Warrior”, in just three hours in the middle of the night. This seems incredible when you know the lyrics are made up of such beautiful prose as “I'm a warrior/Isolated/World gonna listen to me/Violence/Set the free/Wings are gonna spread up/I'm a warrior.”

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Georgia

Farewells, July 2014: Gordimer, Angulo, Winter

The world bid farewell to a Nobel author, several international actors, a guitar hero and the last foreign minister of the Soviet Union.

Georgia
Aleksei Tokarev

Post-Soviet Democracy: What Happens After Elections Matters Even More

Georgia's outgoing President Mikhail Saakashvili has been a darling in the West. Now that his opponents are in power, his fate will tell us much about the nation's young democracy.

MOSCOW – Compared to the totalitarian governments in the East and the European democracies in the West, post-Soviet countries are like a young girl trying to decide between a modest traditional dress that will hide her flaws and a fashionable skirt that will require hours at the gym.

Even among themselves, the post-Soviet nations run the gamut along the continuum between bona fide democracy and absolutist authoritarianism. The recent election of Giorgi Margvelashvili from the Georgian Dream party, the party founded by Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili in opposition to outgoing president Mikhail Saakashvili, was not particularly notable in itself. The bigger test for Georgian democracy is what happens now, after the election; and in particular, what happens to Saakashvili.

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Georgia
Alan Posener

Sixty Years After His Death, Stalin Still A National Hero To Some In Georgia

A visit to the dictator's birthplace in the former Soviet republic of Georgia where a complicated relationship with the notorious native son plays into current tensions with Russia.

GORI - Sixty years ago, on March 5, 1953, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died. But in the city of his birth, Gori in Georgia, time seems to have stood still.

“They” (the unpopular regime of Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili) may have taken the sleepy provincial city’s big, grey statue of Stalin down, but there’s still the grand boulevard known as Stalin Prospect where a small marble Egyptian-style temple has been built to enclose the modest house where Stalin was born. Behind the temple is a Venetian-style palace with a tower that houses the Stalin Museum.

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