Page 48 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine April 2025

48 I Eurasia bne April 2025
Salome Zourabichvili, Georgia’s fifth president Ailis Halligan in Tbilisi
When Salome Zourabichvili
left Georgia’s presidential palace to make way for her successor, the country’s fifth president said she was “taking legitimacy with her”. The end of Zourabichvili’s term came amid a period of ongoing mass unrest in the Caucasus country which began when the ruling Georgia Dream party – re-elected in a vote marred by allegations of mass electoral violations – suspended EU accession negotiations in November 2024.
Although Georgia’s ruling party voted in ex-footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili
as the country’s sixth president in a single-candidate election in December, Zourabichvili is still seen by the opposition and much of civil society
as the country’s legitimate president.
In a conversation with bne IntelliNews, Zourabichvili laid out the complex reality of Georgia’s ongoing political crisis, and explained how the country has become a testing ground for both Russian hybrid interference and western diplomatic intervention.
bne IntelliNews: I’d like to start by talking about the current global, geopolitical situation and Georgia’s place within that. We’ve moved
into a world where US President Donald Trump is displaying loyalty to Vladimir Putin’s Russia even before America and certainly before Europe. Given the current political situation in Georgia and its growing isolation from its Western allies, where do you think Georgia will fit into a united, stronger Europe that now needs to stand up to Trump?
Salome Zourabichvili: I don’t know whether the issue is to stand up to President Trump or whether it is to stand up to Russia. I think the objective of a stronger Europe is certainly to stand up to Russia.
It is very important that the new US administration and our European partners see that what is happening in Georgia is not a simple political crisis, or the [restoration], first progressively and then rapidly, of an autocracy. It’s much more an alternative strategy that Russia is designing to achieve its objectives, given that its military strategy in Ukraine has not been that successful. Russia
has in fact in some ways achieved the contrary – the reinforcement of Nato with Finland and Sweden [joining in 2023 and 2024], and the reinforcement today of the European Union.
So gradually Russia has been designing this hybrid strategy that is at work
in Georgia which, through electoral manipulations, will achieve costless domination of a number of countries. [This strategy] is tested here [in Georgia] but not only here; also in Romania or in Moldova as we’ve seen, and maybe in future in Ukraine.
So, what is very important to see in Georgia, for those that want peace and to prevent new crises, is that this new Russian hybrid strategy can still be stopped without resorting to higher instability in the region. This is what we hope for from the US and the EU, that they see the reality of the situation here.
Trump, it seems, has now demonstrated how easily he will abandon America’s European allies, primarily Ukraine. Can Georgia still longer rely on the White House for the help that it needs?
After the [war with Russia] in 2008 ... We do not rely on the support of our partners for our destiny and independence.
We are continuing our protest, a very peaceful one, and we think that if peace is the objective, not just for us but for the general interests of US and European powers, then it is very
important to prevent a new crisis erupting in Georgia in the process
of attempting to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. The situation is two sides of the same coin. It is not a question of Georgia being abandoned: we have been moving towards European Union and towards Euro-Atlantic integration. We were not there yet but we were very close with the status of candidate.
It should be a challenge for everyone that suddenly a country that was so close [to EU integration] was drawn back to something that is very close to not only Russian domination of Georgia, but of the Caucasus, of the Black Sea, and all the instability this would bring – I think nobody wants this.
What could the impact of an unstable, unjust peace in Ukraine where Putin is granted concessions that would bolster his imperialist ambitions be on Georgia?
I’m not so sure that Russia is going to win the peace talks. It might get some concessions but not Mr Putin’s original war objective to take over the whole of Ukraine.
What Mr Putin is looking at is to attempt domination through a
hybrid strategy with much fewer
costs – costless practically. The test is in Georgia, then in future it might be Romania or Moldova and then it might be through elections in Ukraine. It’s through manipulation of elections and through foreign leaders’ submission [to Russia] that Russia is hoping to attain its objectives, precisely because it is not sure if it is guaranteed to win the peace talks. If it were guaranteed then Russia would not need an alternative strategy.
It's a global picture where we are going to see a lot of unpredictability. My guess would be that this unpredictability
may have a very good effect on the Europeans – it means that the next step
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