Emerging from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, a new nation tries to find its place in the world. Because it borders Russia, it must tread carefully. It has three options: accept Russia’s influence, rebel against it, or try neutrality. Torn by internal divisions, it cannot decide. The result is Russian invasion and devastating war.
That is the story of Ukraine. It could repeat itself in another former Soviet republic: Georgia. An election there this month set off violent protests. Opposition leaders refuse to recognize the president. He has vowed to punish those who rioted. It is a chilling scenario, all too reminiscent of the path that led to war in Ukraine.
The Oct. 4 election in Georgia was for mayors and other local authorities. It produced a resounding victory for Georgian Dream, the ruling party. Both main opposition parties refused to participate. Instead, tens of thousands of their supporters rallied in the capital, Tbilisi. Gangs sought to storm the presidential palace. Police used pepper spray and water cannons to keep them at bay. Prosecutors later charged five protest leaders with seeking to overthrow the government.
Opposition candidates also refused to participate in last year’s presidential election, claiming that Georgian Dream had rigged it. The former president still claims to be the country’s legitimate leader. Frustrated by electoral politics, the opposition has shifted to street protests.
Organizations based in the United States and Western Europe have generously supported the opposition. In the three decades since Georgia won independence, the Open Society Foundations, financed by the Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, have spent more than $100 million on “democracy promotion” projects there. The National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded by Congress, reported spending $3.2 million in Georgia during 2024. The European Union funds a range of “civil society” and “independent media” projects there.
As American and European money rains down on opposition groups, the ruling party also relies on deep-pocketed donors. According to the Western-funded Transparency International Georgia, a regional chapter of the international monitoring group, business executives whose companies receive government contracts are major contributors to Georgian Dream.
This clash of financiers reflects a larger confrontation. Behind every political campaign in Georgia lies the question of Russia. The government wants to maintain good relations with Moscow. Protesters want the opposite: a turn toward Western Europe and the United States. The decisive break came last year, when the government halted talks aimed at bringing Georgia into the European Union. It has arrested opposition leaders and seeks to impose a “foreign agents registration law” to limit the flow of funds to opposition groups.
This course of events closely mirrors what happened in the years before war broke out in Ukraine. Declarations by NATO that it wanted to admit Ukraine helped push Russia to invade. Those declarations repeatedly mentioned Georgia, which also borders NATO member Turkey, as the other former Soviet republic it wished to admit. As early as 2008, NATO declared that it “welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO” and announced that “these countries will become members of NATO.”
Georgia has direct experience with Russian military power. In 2008 a pro-American leader sought to expel Russian troops from two enclaves inside Georgian territory. Russia responded by sending troops who not only held but expanded their enclaves, which they still hold. Russia made clear that it is determined not to allow Georgia to slip out of its sphere of influence.
Russia insists that it cannot accept countries along its borders joining NATO. Georgians eager for change reply that their country has the right to choose its own security partners. Domestic politics is torn along the same divide. Depending on one’s position, Western support for opposition groups is seen as encouragement of democracy or as blatant interference. It is almost identical to the duel of narratives that helped set Ukraine afire.
Georgia and Ukraine are in many ways dissimilar, however. Georgia has less than four million citizens and is barely one-tenth the size of Ukraine. Its culture is undergirded by the Georgian Orthodox Church and a language that uses a unique script. It is said to be the birthplace of wine.
Georgia also exports large amounts of agricultural products, including wine, to Russia. Few Georgians are truly pro-Russian, which is understandable given that they were forcibly pulled into the Soviet Union a century ago. Many, however, want to avoid provoking the Bear because a break in relations could lead to economic trauma. Cosmopolitans in Tbilisi want to make their country fully European, regardless of what Russia thinks. Farmers in the countryside worry that doing so could affect their livelihoods.
In Ukraine, a government sympathetic to Russia was overthrown in a 2014 protest and replaced by one responsive to the West. Georgian leaders are determined not to allow that to happen in their country. But their crackdown on dissent is unlikely to calm the intensifying political storm. If the two groups in Georgia’s divided society cannot reconcile, that storm could lead to violent confrontation.
A Ukraine-style tragedy is hardly inevitable, but Georgia remains Europe’s most flammable tinder box.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
