Georgia’s people are resisting the Euro-Atlantic plot to turn their country into another base for attacking Russia.
On 28 November, following months of increasingly hostile action by European and US imperialists in the country, Georgian prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced the suspension of his country’s European Union accession process, which would be put on hold until at least 2028.
He stated that while an EU association treaty was still being pursued, negotiations for membership of the union and for receipt of EU grants would be suspended. The Georgia–European Union association agreement facilitates cooperation in areas such as trade, political dialogue and sectoral policies, aiming to align Georgia more closely with EU standards.
Government rejects EU blackmail
This action was in fact preceded by a similar one from the other side. Back in July, EU ambassador to Georgia Paweł Herczyński announced that the union itself was pausing Georgia’s accession process and freezing €30m of assistance funds that had been promised to the ministry of defence.
He asserted that Georgia’s new law on ‘transparency of foreign influence’ (ie, that NGOs operating in the country must declare the source of their funding) “is a clear backslide on nine steps, and the anti-western, anti-European rhetoric is fully incompatible with the stated aim of joining the European Union … Georgia’s EU accession has been put on hold.” This blackmail attempt had the opposite effect of the one intended, however.
In calling for a halt from his own side, Kobakhidze said that the Georgian Dream government’s decision was aimed at minimising further opportunities for such blackmail: “We observe that European politicians and bureaucrats are using allocated grants and loans as a tool for blackmail against Georgia. For instance, we all recall their attempt to cancel a €75m loan just weeks before the 2021 elections to illegitimately influence the outcome.
“A similar tactic was employed ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections, but it had no impact on the Georgian people’s decision. Using financial resources for blackmail is not only inappropriate but also an affront to the dignity of the self-respecting Georgian people, and such practices will never be accepted.”
Talking about the need for mutual respect between nations, the prime minister said: “Georgia-EU relations, in their essence, are bilateral and can only be bilateral. We are a proud and self-respecting nation with a great history. It is categorically unacceptable for us to consider integration into the EU as a mercy that the EU should grant us … We intend not to enter the EU begging and standing on one leg, but to join it with dignity, with a functioning democratic system and a strong economy.” (Georgian PM announces government’s halt of EU accession talks until 2028, refusal of bloc’s grants, Agenda.ge, 28 November 2024)
Following this announcement, the USA suspended its strategic partnership treaty with the Caucasian nation, asserting without a blush that Georgia was guilty of “anti-democratic actions” that had “violated the core tenets” and “shared values” of “democracy, rule of law, civil society, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and anti-corruption efforts”.
Various of its allied sidekicks, mouthpieces and proxies have either enacted or called for sanctions against Georgia to punish it for its stance in favour of sovereignty. The prize for most shameless mouthpiece must be handed to Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who said: “Opponents of democracy and violators of human rights are not welcome in our countries.” Presumably he doesn’t include the Nato and Banderite forces operating out of the fascistic Baltic statelets in this category.
Colour revolution formula on display again
The imperialists have been trying to gain full control of Georgia’s political and economic life since the fall of the Soviet Union. The country’s government was successfully coopted during 2003’s west-backed ‘Rose revolution’, which deposed a president who was trying to face east as well as west. Despite his key role in the destruction of the Soviet Union and his desire to open Georgia up to western capital, President Eduard Shevardnadze was considered too close to Russia and was removed in one of a series of such operations that were carried out across the territory of the former USSR.
As in the case of so many countries in Europe and Asia, political or geographical proximity to the Russian Federation are enough to motivate the imperialists to mount a regime change operation. In the minds of Washington’s ‘grand chessboard’ strategists, their ‘Russian problem’ will ultimately be solved only if they can set as many fires as possible along the country’s borders, exhausting its capacities to deal with them all and bringing hardship and deprivation to its citizens. This in turn (it is hoped) will trigger a popular revolt capable (with a little external help, of course) of bringing down the hated (by the west) Moscow administration led by President Vladimir Putin.
True to the tried-and-tested colour revolution formula, a daily protest movement has been instigated by Euro-Atlanticist forces, many of them well-paid employees of west-backed NGOs. The privileged existence of this parasitic layer is under threat by government moves to rein in their influence by forcing them to declare the source of their funds (a not unreasonable demand, one might think, and certainly a measure the USA has in place and keeps well policed!)
While protests have been held in several parts of the country, Tbilisi is their main epicentre and the focus of all violent activity. Protests in the capital have been held daily, but local comrades tell us that numbers are waning, and that even at its peak the movement could not mobilise more than 25,000 people.
While most protesters are peaceful, the crowds have been seeded with a sprinkling of violent hostile actors. These provocateurs throw stones, Molotov cocktails and fireworks at police, and try to build barricades out of destroyed city infrastructure such as payphones, paving slabs and dustbins.
The crowds contain a suspiciously high number of foreign nationals, including Ukrainians, Russians, Americans, assorted European and even some Brits, some of whom have been arrested for provocative activities such as throwing rocks and fireworks at police officers and parliament buildings.
While a few local workers have been mobilised by the all-pervasive colour revolution propaganda, the organised working class – as represented by Georgia’s central and independent trade unions, local initiative groups, miners and metalworkers, etc – either don’t support the protests or have publicly opposed them.
The main forces involved in the protests are political parties and NGOs with ideological and financial ties to western imperialism, and they are spurred on by heavily publicised public statements from EU and US officials. The only ‘left’ forces involved are of the western liberal variety: liberal-left intellectuals and a few west-sponsored ‘left’ organisations and student groups, the latter being encouraged by their professors to abandon their studies and join the protests.
The organisers are even trying to bring children out of school to swell the ranks of the protests – a move endorsed by the president on her Twitter/X account (interesting to note that her post is in English).
The west-anointed leader of this attempt to re-run the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev is President Salome Zourabichvili. It is interesting to note that Ms Zourabichvili was born and brought up in France as a scion of a liberal family that left Georgia in 1921 rather than remaining to live under socialism. One of her uncles disappeared during WW2 after having been identified as a collaborator with the Nazi occupation in France. Another, Mikhail Kedia, lived in Berlin during the war years as head of the Nazi-sponsored ‘Georgian government in exile’. He worked for the Reich’s Georgia desk and expected to be appointed head of state by the fascists after they had ‘liberated’ the republic from Soviet rule.
A group of Georgian mercenaries fighting in Ukraine published a video in which they promised the president they were ready to come back and form a new national guard, but there is as yet no evidence that they have actually left Ukraine.
Georgian socialist view
The assessment of our comrades in Tblisi is that this movement has been entirely engineered and funded by the west, via their local proxies in Georgia: NGOs and a carefully cultivated network of diplomats, intellectuals and political parties.
They also believe that the government strategy has been to force the protestors onto the streets earlier than had been intended, before their preparations were fully in place and before they were able to bring in mercenaries who might have been able to act as snipers or to carry out some other fatal atrocity that could be blamed on state forces and used as a justification for further intervention by the west. (This exact template has been used in many countries over the years, including Syria in 2011 and Ukraine in 2014.)
Georgian security services believed that the regime-change operation had been scheduled to begin in mid-December, when President Zourabichvili is due to leave office. The president has been engaged in escalating hostilities with the government for several years now: as the government has become more inclined towards sovereignty, she has become more stridently oppositional.
As well as blocking the appointment of several diplomats and vetoing the passage of laws that would have changed the composition of the national bank, she tried (unsuccessfully) to block the passing of the foreign agents law that has been causing so much outrage in western circles.
Having described this summer’s parliamentary election (won by Georgian Dream) as “fraudulent”, Ms Zourabichvili has refused to leave office when her replacement is chosen on 14 December. She is facing impeachment and a possible prison term if the regime change movement is unsuccessful in toppling the government.
If, on the other hand, the imperialist operation should be successful, Russian intervention in Georgia is almost inevitable. Since the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 (which the present government has now openly admitted was triggered by Mikheil Saakashvili’s government at the behest of the west), the country has been almost completely demilitarised. This means that Russia would have a small window of opportunity to intervene before any Nato armaments could be brought in (one of the aims of the regime change operation is to bring Georgia into Nato and thus bring imperialist bases closer to Russia in the southern Caucasus region).
A second military front would thus be opened up for Russia while it is still fighting in Ukraine – a major aim of the imperialist bloc as it stares its imminent defeat in the face. Our comrades point out that, as in the case of Ukraine, a pro-Nato coup in Georgia would be enough to force Russia’s hand in this regard, even without any direct military attack. This would serve the dual purpose of diverting Russian military forces and using up Russian resources while allowing western media and diplomacy to go into overdrive about how ‘aggressive, imperialist Russia’ is staging another ‘unprovoked invasion’ against a ‘peaceful neighbour’.
We wish the Georgian people success in foiling the coup plotters. The progressive world must stand firmly with them and their chosen government against the aggressive manoeuvres of the imperialists. The financiers in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin do not care a jot for the masses; they care only for their own ability to continue controlling and plundering the world.
They must not be allowed to turn the people of Georgia into fresh fodder for their war machine.
