Nicolas Cinquini

Since March 7, 2023, a few thousands protestors are confronting the police in front of the parliament in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. They are demanding the removal of a new draft law and against Russia, the Euro-Atlantic integration of the country. The law would require all organizations which are receiving more than 20% of their funds from abroad to register as foreign agents. The targets are indeed the groups that the US and European Union are sponsoring, in order to demand the Euro-Atlantic integration. The scenography of the demonstration reminds the previous West-inspired color revolutions in Eurasia since 2003. Because as usual, the movement is not democratic, possibly revolutionary or neither, would not emancipate the people nor maintain independence of the country.

The bill comes from a democratically elected government. The Kartuli Otsneba [Georgian Dream] party has won April 2021 election with 46.75% of the vote. 40-year-old Irakli Garibashvili is prime minister since February 22, 2021. He is not anti-Europe nor pro-Russia, patriot, I guess. He signed on March 3, 2022, a letter for the official application of the country for EU membership. But Europe did not granted Georgia candidate status. The president is a figurehead. 70-year-old Salome Zourabichvili has been elected on December 16, 2018. She is a Franco-Georgian politician. The Constitution is defining her role as guarantor of the country’s unity and national independence. But when the protests have erupted yesterday, she was in the US, where she expressed her support to the protestors, against her own government. Something is fishy.

In the international context of the Russian special military operation for liberation of Donbass, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, while the Atlanticist defeat is enacted in Bakhmut, the event reminds especially Kiev, nine years ago.

Ukraine was an associate member of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States, former Soviet Union) economic union since April 1994. Its president, Viktor Yanukovych, had been democratically elected on February 25, 2010. A free trade agreement was negotiated with the European Union, but on February 25, 2013, Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, stated that its enforcement required that Ukraine quit its association with the CIS. On November 21, Yanukovych put the signature of the agreement on hold. In Lviv, Western Ukraine, protestors started chanting

for the EU, death to the enemies, dirty Russian speakers on the gallows

Their sponsor was Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of Nazi Svoboda party. First a few and peaceful in Kiev, the protestors were 500,000 at Maidan square on December 1, the most from the west, around a Nazi and bellicose core. US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland visited Kiev on December 5, supported the protestors. The economy was deteriorating, Ukraine was asking for financial support. Europe refused, Russia agreed. On December 17, 2013, a new deal was signed with Russia

At Maidan square, on February 18, 2014, shots targeted the riot police and the protestors, the situation escalated to a bloodbath. On February 21, Yanukovych signed an agreement with the leaders of the parliamentary opposition and left the country. 103 protestors and 13 police officers had died. The Nazis held one third of the interim government, notably defense. NATO had achieved a rightist coup in Ukraine.

However, Georgia is not member of the CIS nor the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Russia has no interest there, rather a dispute, as protector of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, territories that Georgia is still claiming. Through the protests in Tbilisi, against a sovereign country, the US may attempt to move again one checker at Russia border, a diversion while the West is defeated in Ukraine. Some exalted pro-West commenters are already calling for new Georgian invasions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Only time will tell.