On the streets of Georgia, it’s starting to look a little like the Ukraine of 10 years ago, before the war, when tensions with Russia started brewing.
An increasingly authoritarian government in a former Soviet republic cools to the European Union and drifts closer to Moscow.
Enormous protests erupt, calling for the government’s ouster.
Riot police respond.
Young demonstrators are beaten up and dragged away.
Each side digs in, raising the specter of a major crisis in a country that has long struggled to break away from Russian dominance.
On the continent’s far eastern edge, embracing the European Union can be a risky move, threatening vested interests, especially those of Russia, which is wary to lose any of its regional influence.
These tensions have been playing out to different degrees in recent years in Georgia, Moldova and, in the most extreme example, Ukraine. All three are former Soviet republics and Russian troops occupy different slices of each.
In Georgia, what concerns people here and beyond are the unmistakable echoes of Ukraine’s popular revolution in 2014 that succeeded in pulling the country away from Moscow but ultimately resulted in a devastating war.
“The government is trying to turn the country back to the Russian sphere of influence against the will of the people, who were moving toward the West, which felt almost inevitable,” said Cristina Florea, a historian at Cornell University who specializes in Eastern Europe.
“It is creepily similar to what happened in Ukraine,” she said, and “so, so worrying.”
Ever since the ruling party announced in late November it was postponing its effort to join the European Union, thousands of outraged, pro-Europe Georgians have poured into the streets of Tbilisi, the capital, provoking a brutal response.
Lazare Maglakelidze, a 20-year-old computer science student, said men in unmarked black uniforms snatched him from a recent protest, dragged him into a van, pummeled his face, broke his nose and threatened to rape him. He shared medical records and video footage corroborating much of his account.
Still, in an interview, speaking through a mask of medical tape, he said he wasn’t discouraged and found the Ukraine parallel inspiring.
“Ukraine is where we see people fighting for their dignity, dedicating their lives to the highest of high concepts that anybody can imagine,” he said.
“Yes, there’s a risk to standing up to Russia,” he went on. “But it’s better to die fighting, to die with dignity, than to live a miserable, unworthy, unholy life.”
Major powers have often interceded in conflicts in this region. The United States and its European allies have also tried to sway events in Georgia, supporting nonprofit organizations and segments of the population striving to bring the country closer to the West — at times rankling Georgia’s government.
The latest clashes have widened that divide. On Monday, Britain announced it would reduce its support to the Georgian government, citing “shocking scenes of violence” toward protesters and journalists. The United States has been equally critical, accusing the ruling party of “anti-democratic actions” and suspending what had been a longstanding U.S.-Georgia strategic partnership.
Tucked between Russia and Turkey in the rugged Caucasus region, Georgia has for centuries served as a vital corridor between East and West. But more and more it is looking West.
A recent survey showed that 82 percent of the country, which has a population of 3.7 million, wanted to become part of the European Union. The goal of joining the E.U. — as well as NATO — is even enshrined in Georgia’s constitution. Protests started last year when the government began making moves that seemed to push Georgia further from this.
First, it backed a measure that mirrored a Russian law that went after human rights groups and nonprofits that received Western funding. Next it adopted a measure that severely curtailed gay rights. European officials denounced both and warned that they would imperil Georgia’s chances of entering their club.
Then, in late November, the ruling party, called Georgian Dream, made a stunning announcement: It was suspending for four years the formal process to join the European Union.
The news landed like a gut punch to the many Georgians, especially the young, who dream of moving freely across all those borders and landing good jobs. For years, officials have passed all kinds of E.U.-friendly reforms, and Georgian business leaders have been angling for a bonanza in trade.
But now, opposition leaders say, the government has ditched this for what they call “the Russian blueprint.”
Government officials push back, saying it’s wrong to label them anti-West or pro-Russia.
“Our position is very clear: We want to survive as a country,” said Levan Makhasvili, a member of Parliament and one of the ruling party’s foreign policy leaders.
“Unfortunately, you don’t choose neighbors,” he said. “And we have existential security threats from Russia on a daily basis.”
Their solution, he said, was a “pragmatic” foreign policy that continues to move toward Europe, “but cautiously,” so as not to antagonize Russia. Many of the requests European officials have made, he said, could have provoked a confrontation with Russia or been hugely detrimental to Georgians.
He cited the West’s economic sanctions on Russia as an example. Georgia initially joined them but stopped after it became clear that cutting off trade with Russia would hurt the Georgian economy while barely laying a glove on Russia’s.
More absurd, he said, was a Ukrainian request that Georgia allow easy passage for volunteer fighters to travel to Ukraine.
Such a move, he said, could have set off a military escalation with Russia, which already occupies about 20 percent of Georgia, stemming from a short, intense war in 2008.
Georgian Dream claims a mandate for making policy, having won elections this October. But many Georgians believe they were rigged and election observers have raised concerns about pressure and intimidation.
During the election, Georgian Dream candidates said that if Georgians didn’t want their country to plunge into war, they better vote for the party’s “pragmatic” approach.
The party even put up billboards contrasting Ukraine’s destruction with images of shiny buildings in Georgia and labeling the destruction side with little numbers that corresponded to the numbers on ballots assigned to opposition parties.
Opposition figures say that Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder of Georgian Dream who is widely viewed as the puppeteer controlling Georgia politics, is steering the country away from the West. He made his fortune in Russia and, they say, still has deep ties to the country.
They point to way the government has cracked down — arresting opposition leaders, hauling away hundreds of protesters and beating people up — as more evidence of “the Russian blueprint.”
A lot of the violence has been captured on video, like security officers kicking a young man in the face after he was already on the ground.
Another episode involved an attack on Guram Rogava, a seasoned TV presenter.
Video footage shows him standing in front of the parliament building, microphone in hand, broadcasting live, when a security officer runs furiously at him and slugs him in the back of the head.
The blow cracked his seventh vertebrae, medical reports showed. He crashed to the ground, blood gushing from his face. “If I were doing something wrong, then why didn’t that man detain me?” Mr. Rogava, wearing a neck brace, asked from his kitchen. “He hit me and ran away.”
The riot police weren’t behaving like cops, he said, but like criminals.
Who exactly they were has become a big question. Mr. Rogava and many others have said they suspect that the government has hired private security guards and people from outside Tbilisi to help quash the protests.
When asked about this and police brutality, Georgia’s ministry of interior declined to comment.
Georgia is of course different from Ukraine. It’s not Slavic. It wasn’t as central to Soviet industry or agriculture. And it’s not physically as close to Western Europe.
Conflict here doesn’t ring alarm bells the same way Ukraine has in Poland, the Baltics and other E.U. members. Still, it is a frontline state and quite complicated.
“The countries in this region are so deeply enmeshed with Russia it’s difficult to break off ties,” said Ms. Florea, the Eastern Europe scholar. “Therein lies the problem.”
Many Georgians worry not just about the political shift, but the cultural one as well. David Apakidze, an artist, said that what concerns him most is the anti-gay law, which went into effect this past week. It bans same-sex marriages and criminalizes the sharing of information that promotes same-sex relationships.
Mr. Apakidze is gay.
“If I come out to the street and say to my neighbor, ‘Hi, I’m David, I’m gay,’ will I go to jail?” he asked.
“I don’t know if I can stay here,” he said. “But I love this country. I don’t know where else I’d go.”
Every night he walks to the protests, which are held after people get off work. He circulates among friends, warms his hands on bonfires and joins in the down-with-the-government chants.
Tens of thousands of people stand alongside him, many wrapped in flags: Georgia’s, the European Union’s and even a few Ukrainian. The atmosphere resembles a giant block party — at least until the police move in.
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