In the Republic of Georgia, the violence that began on Monday with smacks inside Parliament has ended up spilling over in front of it, between yesterday and today. The source of contention is the Foreign Agents Law, supported by a majority of deputies, which obliges NGOs and the media to register and be audited, if they exceed 20% of foreign financing. In case of non-compliance, the sanctions are serious.
At the rallies, with some déjà vu, the rallying cry is "fuck Russia", supposedly inspiring legislation that puts US influence on target. Until last night, thousands of people peacefully surrounded the outside of Parliament in Tbilisi. However, a minority tried to take it by storm, motivating the intervention of hundreds of riot police, with tear gas and water cannons. These were eventually used to rout the protesters, some of whom were waving flags of the EU, the United States, Ukraine and also Georgia.
The police allege that most of the 50 wounded registered among their own ranks, the target of some Molotov cocktails. They would also have made 66 arrests.
But the central Avrnida Rustaveli was filling up again this Wednesday afternoon, due to the Women's Day march and the call for the United National Movement. This party, founded by the imprisoned former prime minister, Mijeil Saakashvili, calls for "going out to the streets every day, until victory."
It is not surprising that in Ukraine -very present among the organizers- parallels are already being sought with the "Maidan revolution" in Kyiv in 2014.
Georgian Dream, the party that won half the seats in the last election, defends the bill, saying it brings "greater transparency." Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said Tuesday in Germany that the "Foreign Agents Law" is "perfectly comparable to others on the international scene." Although without clarifying the Russian law of 2012, as denounced by its detractors, the Hungarian laws or the Foreign Agents Registration Act of the United States itself.
In countries like Georgia, many of the most coveted jobs often fall into this category, now under suspicion. In Narendra Modi's India, tens of thousands of NGOs had to close their doors already in his first legislature, as foreign funding was practically prohibited.
What Garibashvili, in the wake of the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, can see as interference, is instead seen by many young people as the best guarantee of rapprochement with the orbit of Brussels and Washington. The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, has condemned the law, calling it "incompatible with European values".
From New York, the president of Georgia openly criticizes "Russian law" and says that she will veto it. Salome Zurabishvili can hardly take kindly to a law that puts foreign influence under suspicion, when she herself has been French for most of her life, even serving as French ambassador in Tbilisi. Although Zurabishvili was elected with the support of the ruling party, the relationship has since gone south. Her term ends next year and her position will no longer be elected by universal suffrage.
Also Saakashvili, today in jail "for corruption and abuse of power", was politically trained thanks to a grant from the US State Department. Edvard Shevernadze, who had been foreign minister of the Soviet Union for many years.
From Ukraine, parallels have been drawn with the Maidan, with which Ukrainian nationalists -with Western support, a popular cushion and the use of far-right shock forces- overthrew the elected government, in which the influence of the east and south predominated. of the country, markedly Russian-speaking. The secondary effect was the coup by Moscow, which seized the Crimea cleanly, while encouraging its own rebellion, this time in the relatively Russophile Donbass, where today the bloodiest battles Europe has seen since World War II are being fought.
In 2008, during the Beijing Olympics, Mijeil Saakashvili tried to recapture South Ossetia militarily. Not only did he not succeed, but the Russian army came to stand very close to Tbilisi. Although he withdrew from there, it is hard to imagine that one day he would do so from South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Meanwhile, Saakashvili, who a few years ago dabbled in him as a minister in Kyiv's already fiercely anti-Russian government, is currently jailed in Georgia.
There has always been an anti-Russian streak in Georgia (even if Stalin was Georgian) and indeed Georgians are perhaps, in proportion to their demographic weight, the largest contributors to pro-Ukrainian volunteer and mercenary brigades.
However, things have changed a lot since 2008 when George W. Bush promised the entry of Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Something repeatedly described by Vladimir Putin as an impassable red line.
Added to the punishment of the territorial losses for aligning against Moscow -in Georgia, Ukraine or Moldova- is the tense regional context, since 2014 and, not to mention, since last year. Without forgetting that, in less than two decades, the armies of Turkey and Azerbaijan have made a qualitative leap. In Baku, the autocratic regime of Ilham Aliyev, courted by the West and armed by Israel, Turkey and Pakistan, forcibly recaptured much of Nagorno Karabagh from Armenian hands in 2020.
Without the mediation of Russia - which has a military base in Armenia - the result could have been even worse for the Armenians. Azerbaijan, at the end of last year -and to this day- cut with civilians the road that serves as an umbilical cord between Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia, putting military pressure on it even in its own territory. Until Iran began to mobilize troops to its borders.
Georgia and Armenia are the only two Caucasian states with a Christian tradition. Nations with an ancient language that history has surrounded by Muslim neighbors on all sides except one. They are two mirrors facing each other and two fragile mirrors.
