In the coming weeks, two European countries that were once part of the Soviet Union will have to decide which side of geopolitics – and perhaps history – they are on. What does it mean? Continue their rapprochement with the West and the European Union or return to the Russian fold. It may seem like an extreme simplification, but in reality it is what awaits them, and these choices, like the outcome of the war in Ukraine, will partly determine the face of tomorrow’s Europe.
On October 20, Moldovans will be called to vote in the first round of the presidential elections and choose in a referendum whether they want to amend the Constitution to allow the country to join the EU. Six days later Georgians will be called to the polls to elect the new parliament and decide whether they want to put an end to twelve years of government by the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party (ქართული ოცნება, KO) and hand the country over to the pro-European opposition.
European tropism in Moldova
I polls they give the outgoing Moldovan president, liberal and pro-European, Maia Sandu, with a clear advantage over her most popular opponent, the former attorney general (minister of justice) Alexandru Stoianoglo, candidate of the Socialist Party of former pro-Russian president Igor Dodon.
As regards the referendum, the same poll gives two thirds of the preferences to “yes”, in line with i data relating to the percentage of citizens in favor of Moldova’s entry into the EU (63 percent). If, however, the pro-European party does not win, we will see pro-Russian or “sovereignist” parties promoting a rapprochement with Moscow and the adoption of laws inspired by the Russian one on foreign agents, as in Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria and Georgia.
Georgian complexity
In Georgia the situation appears much more complex. In recent months the respective positions of the Georgian Dream and the opposition parties have only hardened more and more. The government, led in an increasingly less hidden manner by the richest man in the country (it is estimated that his fortune represents almost 30 percent of the national GDP) and founder of KO, Bidzina Ivanishvili, continues to campaign in favor of a rapprochement to Europe, but at the same time adopts measures that seem taken from the Kremlin’s manual for authoritarian regimes.
The recent law on “foreign agents” and the one adopted in September 2024 to ban “LGBT propaganda” are so incompatible with EU membership that the latter has suspended the membership procedure formally started in December 2023. Like the measures Of Vladimir Putinthese too were designed to crush Georgian civil society and purge it of any dissent, effectively distancing Georgia from the West and marking its rapprochement with Moscow.
This attitude contrasts with the will of the Georgians, who almost 90 percent are in favor of joining the EU. With an ideological and political discrepancy so bold as to deceive the most distracted, KO on the one hand claims to be pursuing the path towards the Union – the omnipresent logo of his electoral campaign merges the European flag and the party symbol – and on the other multiplies gestures of détente – and even vassalage – towards the Kremlin, which is why several members of the party have been subject to sanctions by the United States.
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Against Georgian Dream, which according to him latest polls should obtain around 33 percent of the votes, civil society and the opposition are organizing themselves to form a common front. Over 99 percent of the organizations (independent media, NGOs, associations, etc.) targeted by the “Russian law” have refused to register as “foreign agents”, even at the risk of heavy fines for violators, and are betting on the end of the reign of Ivanishvili’s party. Once divided between movements with different orientations, the political opposition has grouped itself into various informal coalitions, which should reach close to 50 percent of the votes, according to the same polls.
For her part, the President of the Republic, the independent Salomé Zourabichvili, has used all the levers at her disposal to keep the country anchored to Europe and to the objective of joining the EU. His “Georgian paper”, which 19 parties have joined, wants to provide a roadmap for the pro-Western opposition to Georgian Dream, proposing that, after the elections, a caretaker government guarantees the democratic transition and implements the reforms necessary for joining the ‘Eu.
Determined to play the card of the fracture between the camp that defends traditional values - it enjoys the support of the Orthodox Church as in the Soviet era – and the pro-Western “pseudoliberal” camp, KO has tightened its tone: first Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced abolition of all opposition coalitions after the elections, and then Ivanishvili he accused the latter of wanting to “open a second front” in the war in Ukraine in Georgia.
A pro-European scooter in Tbilisi. | Photo: ©GPA
Georgia shares with Ukraine a past as a former Soviet republic forcibly annexed to the USSR and partly occupied by Russian or pro-Russian troops (in 2008 Moscow invaded the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – Tskhinvali for the Georgians).
Georgian Dream therefore leverages Georgians’ fear of being involved in the conflict on the other side of the Black Sea by the “global war party”, i.e. the Western countries that militarily support Ukraine. Solidarity in Kiev is widespread among the population, judging by the plethora of Ukrainian flags and anti-Russia graffiti that can be seen on the streets of Tbilisi.
Do we want to live in a country like Russia, without freedom of expression, or do we really want to be part of the Western community and, in the future, of the EU? – Lasha Bakradze
To spare Georgia from a fate similar in his opinion to that of Ukraine, KO does not hesitate to compromise with its Russian neighbor, with mafia methods of intimidation appearing to be inspired by the FSB, the Russian security services, he observes Mark Mikiashvilipolitical science researcher and member of the liberal opposition party Droa: for months now, representatives of the opposition and civil society and their families have regularly received more or less threatening anonymous phone calls, are followed, beaten by groups of masked people or subjected to defamatory campaigns – for example with posters stuck to their homes or offices with their portraits and the words “traitor”. These are “methods very far from what Georgians are used to, with a hitherto unknown level of physical and verbal violence,” he adds.
The reaction of civil society is up to what is at stake: in Tbilisi the largest protests since independence in 1991 saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to demand the withdrawal of the “Russian law” project. They were led by “GenZ”, teenagers and young adults, whose independent spirit, creativity and solidarity have left their mark in Georgia and abroad.
For its part, Georgian Dream naturally denies any form of pressure and says it is confident of its victory. Irakli Kobakhidze and the media close to the government they repeat that KO garners almost 60 percent of voting intentions, “a more than ridiculous figure”, comments the historian Put it on the manufacturers (no relation to the head of government): “They have never achieved this result, especially after months of protests and anti-Western and pro-Russian measures.”
Put it on the manufacturers. | Photo: ©GPA
However, Kobakhidze underlines the risk that KO could rig the elections and proclaim himself the winner regardless of the result, and evokes “the Venezuelan scenario”. In 2018, outgoing president Nicolás Maduro validated his re-election against the opinion of the Central Electoral Commission, establishing an authoritarian and repressive regime.
“There are worrying signs pointing in this direction”, continues Kobakhidze: KO “has changed the electoral law and now the government can certify the results without involving the opposition; [i leader dei partiti] they built a three-metre high wall around the headquarters of the Central Election Commission and removed the paving stones in the streets adjacent to parliament for fear that any demonstrators might use them against them, as happened in Kiev during the Maidan uprising at the end of 2013. They have the police, the judiciary and the central electoral commission under control, so the Maduro scenario is plausible.”
Marika Mikiashvili. | Photo: ©GPA
In this case, explains Marika Mikiashvili, faced with the inevitable protests that will break out, “the government will probably be reluctant to use violence according to the Russian model. Georgia is a small country, everyone knows each other and the threshold for what is considered violence is lower than in many other countries. We are very sensitive to violence: here, burning a car during a demonstration is more unique than rare. Last year we saw the first Molotov cocktail since the clashes that preceded independence. If the government started shooting into crowds, most police officers would not be able to withstand the pressure from society and their families.”
What is at stake in the elections goes beyond Georgia, underlines Marika Mikiashvili: “Several experts agree that Georgia is at the forefront in the defense of civil liberties in a region that we can take from candidate countries to join the European Union to some member states”, an implicit reference to Hungary and Slovakia.
If Georgian Dream were to remain in power, “it would give other illiberal states in Europe a nice push to adopt the policies and laws they want.” For neighboring Armenia, another former Soviet republic with a complicated relationship with Moscow, which effectively withdrew its military and diplomatic support during the recent conflict that ended with the loss of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, “the victory of the Georgian Dream would endanger the physical integrity and democracy of the country, which would find itself surrounded by pro-Russian autocratic regimes,” he observes.
And in the event of an opposition victory, should we fear a scenario similar to what occurred in Ukraine in 2014, with the Russian invasion? “Some representatives of the Duma [parlamento russo] they said that Russia is ready to intervene militarily if KO asks for its help,” says Beka Kobakhidze, “but I don’t see how this could happen, because Georgia is not Crimea. At the very least one can say that there is widespread hostility towards Russia. Russia has several hybrid mechanisms at its disposal and I think it will choose this path instead.”
Lasha Bakradze. | Photo: ©GPA
“I don’t know what the outcome of the elections will be. What I am sure of is that they will be neither fair nor free”, says the writer and member of the opposition Lasha Bakradze“but we must fight, because this is nothing more than a referendum on the future of Georgia. Do we want to live in a country like Russia, without freedom of expression, or do we really want to be part of the Western community and, in the future, of the EU?”.
This article was produced as part of the PULSE project, a European initiative to support cross-border journalistic cooperation. Mila Corlateanu by n-ost (Germany) contributed to its creation.
