Georgia’s most powerful man may be Putin’s greatest success – Dagsavisen

An existential struggle for democracy is taking place in Georgia now. Should the small country on the Black Sea continue its journey towards the EU and the West, or is the country’s government about to bow down to the occupier Russia?

Georgia’s richest and most powerful man, Bidzina Ivanishvili, has thrown away his mask. In a speech heavily laden with conspiracy theories, he recently unleashed anti-Western rhetoric that would have been completely unthinkable for a Georgian leader a few years ago. From the podium, in front of protesters and public servants who had been bussed in from all over the country to support the government, he lashed out at “The Global War Party”.

“The global war party” is basically a conspiracy theory, which the oligarch Ivanishvili is persistently spreading. The message is strikingly similar to that coming from the Kremlin. The “global war party” has decisive influence over the EU and NATO, according to Ivanishvili, and only sees Georgia and Ukraine as cannon fodder.

Ivanishvili does not say exactly which people in Western countries are behind this international conspiracy. But these extremely influential people supposedly want to drag Georgia into war and create “a second front” from Georgia against Russia, and they want to bring back the “sadistic dictatorship” that ruled the country before he came to power. They do this, according to Ivanishvili, with the help of civil society organizations that receive support from Western countries. And with the help of the opposition in Georgia. It is therefore essential that the country introduces a new law against “foreign agents”. To prevent revolution, dictatorship and war.

The law he is talking about almost sounds like an echo of the law Vladimir Putin has used to crush all opposition in Russia. Both the law and the shameful conspiracy theory behind it are designed to suppress and demonize the opposition and civil society. If your organization receives more than 20 per cent of its income from abroad, you are in practice branded as a “foreign agent”. But while unleashing these conspiratorial volleys of power against Western institutions, he promised, absurdly, that Georgia will join the EU by 2030.

Russia is not mentioned with a bad word by Georgia’s most powerful man

In a country that has Euro-Atlantic integration, i.e. membership of the EU and NATO, written into the constitution, the anti-Western message is blaring. For many years, the EU flag has flown outside the parliament in Georgia – without the country having been a member. 86 percent of the population wants EU membership, 79 percent wants to join NATO. The country was recently granted candidate status by the EU. Tens of thousands of Georgians, most of them young Generation Z, have now taken to the streets to protest the law, which has yet to be passed. They have kept going, day after day, despite pepper spray and rubber bullets, and have no plans to give up.

Georgia has 3.7 million inhabitants. The country seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991. 12 years later, in 2003, the country got rid of the corrupt president Eduard Shevardnadze, in what was called the Rose Revolution. The country’s new president, Mikheil Saakashvili, launched a large-scale modernization and fight against corruption and bet heavily on turning Georgia towards the EU, the US and NATO and away from former colonial master Russia.

This, of course, did not sit well with Russia, and in 2008, after luring Saakashvili into confrontation over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, they invaded their tiny Georgian neighbor to the south. They consolidated their control over the two breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are internationally recognized as part of Georgia, and declared them “independent”. In practice, the two breakaway republics are anything but independent of the Kremlin.

In 2012, four years after the crushing defeat in the war against Russia, the increasingly authoritarian Saakashvili lost the election to Bidzina Ivanishvili, who became prime minister. The eccentric multibillionaire promised more democracy and a better relationship with both the West and Russia. When Ivanishvili took power in 2012, he was seen by many as a breath of fresh air in Georgian politics. At first it didn’t look so bad. Civil society was given freer reins, and it became easier to express one’s opinion publicly.

Ivanishvili made much of his fortune in Russia in the 90s. He is in a class of his own among Georgia’s wealthy, with a fortune of 4.9 billion dollars, well over 50 billion kroner. That’s over half of Georgia’s state budget. He made a fortune at the start of the 90s, including importing modern phones. From there he also began business activities with metals and banking.

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After just one year, Ivanishvili resigned as prime minister, handing over power to one of his former associates. There have been several prime ministers since then from his Georgian Dream party, but in practice Ivanishvili has pulled the strings all along. It has long been a publicly known secret that he is the country’s informal and real ruler.

So, has Ivanishvili largely changed politically from the time he took power in 2012 until today? It is not certain. Perhaps he had plans all along to tie Georgia closer to Russia and in that way cement his power as an authoritarian leader? Putin may have secretly exerted great influence over Georgia since 2012. Could Georgia’s most powerful man be under massive pressure and influence from Moscow?

The think tank ECFR writes that oligarchs from former Soviet republics who made much of their fortune through connections to Russia have little freedom to act independently. It believes that it is unlikely that Ivanishvili is an exception to this rule. Are they right? Hard to say. If they are right, Russia may have gained decisive influence over the neighboring country without losing a single soldier. If that were to be the case, it could be Putin’s greatest foreign policy success. The story does not yet have two lines under the answer.

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It can also be more opportunistic – that the Russian neighbor to the north is a better ally than the West if you want to build an authoritarian state. And that this has been brought to the fore after the war in Ukraine, now that the USA and the EU to a greater extent demand that one clearly choose a side. Georgia’s cooperation with China has also increased, and Georgians are now allowed to travel visa-free to China.

In any case, it is striking how Ivanishvili is now attacking Western allies. It is a watershed. Russia is not mentioned with a bad word by Georgia’s most powerful man, even though a massive majority of the population sees Russia as the biggest threat to Georgia’s independence. The oligarch Ivanishvili links only Western powers to the “Global War Party” – not the occupier Russia.

Ivanishvili and the Georgian dream have steeled themselves now. Last year they were forced to withdraw an almost identical foreign agent proposal after massive national and international protests. This time they have no plans for the same. Georgian Dream has just passed a law that makes it legal to bring money home to Georgia from tax havens tax-free. Several have pointed out that this may be so that Ivanishvili can get his money home, in case he is now exposed to international sanctions.

The situation in the country is highly tense and absurd. In front of the military, the prime minister openly calls the country’s president a traitor. After all, the president has opposed the law against foreign agents and some of the other laws the government will force through. The polarization in society is enormous, and one gets the impression that the ruling party has learned a few tricks from Putin.

Georgia’s new agent law has met with enormous opposition from EU countries, the US, the UN and international organisations. The people of Georgia fought valiantly to end the agency law last year. Now they have to fight an even harder battle to stop the law again, but the people of Georgia have shown that they can put an end to authoritarian leaders before.

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