Image by Arzu Geybulla. The flag of Georgia, image by Zura Narimanishvili, freely usable under the Unsplash license.
More than 20,000 signatures have been collected on an online petition calling for visas to be introduced for citizens of Russia and Belarus arriving in Georgia. The petition, filed Aug. 3, is the latest anti-Russia sentiment in the nation.
According to Civil.ge, this isn’t the first time the Georgia government has received such a request. Similar demands were made in February, when Russia invaded Ukraine, and then in March, but so far the ruling Georgian Dream party has said such measures are “irrational”. The leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Irakli Kobachidze, even likened disdain for Russians in Georgia to anti-Semitism.
Russians can currently stay in Georgia without a visa for a period of up to a year – a right that around seventy countries are entitled to, according to the Georgian Foreign Ministry.
The Georgian population as a whole has taken a clear position, and since the beginning of the invasion there have been numerous mass protests in favor of Ukraine. At that time, many parallels were drawn with the 5-day war in 2008 between Russia and Georgia in the two separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
When Georgia expressed interest in joining NATO in 2008, tensions escalated and culminated in a war that claimed hundreds of lives, displaced tens of thousands and left both territories in a state of frozen conflict. A six-point peace agreement signed between Russia and Georgia on August 16, 2008 did not prevent Russia from recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent, which was widely condemned by Western leaders. This condemnation was reinforced in a statement issued by the acting head of the EU delegation to Georgia on the eve of the anniversary: ”As the EU together condemns in the strongest possible terms Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine, We also reiterate our condemnation of the Recognition and continued military presence of Russia in the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It is a violation of both international law and Russia’s obligations under the August 12, 2008 agreement.”
On August 9, the NATO Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Caucasus and Central Asia, Javier Colomina, called on Russia to withdraw its troops from Georgia.
As reiterated at the #MadridSummit, #NATO strongly supports Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders and continues to call on Russia to honor its international obligations and commitments and to withdraw its forces from Georgia
— Javier Colomina (@JavierColominaP) August 8, 2022
Screenshot from the Dedaena website.
The signature campaign to introduce a new visa protocol was followed by an incident at the local bar Dedaena in Tbilisi [Mother Tongue]. In a Facebook post shared on Aug. 4, Data Gurdjieff, the bar’s owner, said the bar has been inundated with negative reviews on Google and threats on other social media platforms. “My personal posts will be reported and deleted,” Gurdjieff added. The cyber attack was caused by a visa registration form available on the bar’s website. “Citizens of Russia need a visa to enter Bar Dedaena as not ALL Russians are welcome. We stand for equality and unity, but we must ensure that brainwashed Russian imperialists do not end up in our bar. Please support us by filling out a VISA application so no one has to hang out next to Ass*Oles. Thank you for your understanding,” the form says.
Screenshot from the Dedaena website.
There is also a registration form for other visitors – albeit less complex.
According to reports from Radio Liberty, the form has “angered a loose network of radical Russian chauvinists and ultra-nationalists who continue to harass and bully perceived cultural enemies online, despite their patriarchal male state movement being banned in Russia since October 2021.”
Within hours of the Male State and its sympathizers’ coordinated attack on the establishment over its treatment of Russians on August 4, Google was inundated with thousands of negative reviews of Dedaena, and the bar’s management said its website had been hacked.
The online mob had also portrayed Dedaena as a haven for homosexuality, citing its existence as evidence that Georgia should be conquered and Georgians should be brutalized.
By August 6, according to Dedaena’s update on Facebook, the attacks leaked out.
The executive secretary of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Mamuka Mdinaradze, called Dedaena’s visa policy “shameful”.
“It’s a shame that our fellow citizens are waging a xenophobic campaign,” Mdinaradze said, according to the JamNews report.
A March survey by CRRC Georgia found that 59 percent of Georgians support restrictions on Russians entering the country. Support was particularly strong among young people and those in opposition.
There are also fears that the presence of more Russian citizens in Georgia poses a security risk. There are no guarantees that the Kremlin will not decide to intervene on the pretext that the rights of Russian citizens need to be protected in countries like Georgia.
Meanwhile, the ruling party has been criticized for its weak stance on Russia since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On February 1, Georgia’s national parliament passed a resolution in support of Ukraine, but was criticized by the opposition for not naming the attacker. After the invasion, Irakli Kadagishvili, the chairman of the Procedural Issues and Rules Committee, said a new resolution was underway. Whether this was the case could not be confirmed at the time of writing this story.
On August 3, Transparency International’s Georgia chapter published a study on “Georgia’s Economic Dependence on Russia: Impact of the Russia-Ukraine War.” According to the research, TI Georgia said, between January and June 2022, Georgia received 2.5 times more remittances, tourism and goods exports from Russia than the indicators of the previous year. In addition, between March and June, the country registered seven times more companies than in the previous year. “A total of 13,500 Russian companies are registered in Georgia, and half of them were registered after the war began,” the report said.
A higher number of Russian visitors was also reported. Between January and June 2022, Georgia accepted over 200,000 Russian citizens. And while the numbers are down compared to previous years, they’re still significant as the nation was shut down for much of the year due to COVID-19 and other war-related travel restrictions.
For the ruling government, however, the numbers and findings of the TI Georgia report meant little. Shortly after the report was released, Speaker of Parliament Shalva Papuashvili said the report spread xenophobia against Russians in Georgia. The spokesman said the Russians who came to Georgia are “mainly young people” with “good incomes” who are employed in Russia in IT, culture and management. “This is the middle class” who want “stability, democracy and freedom” which is our country, Papuashvili said.
Georgia has never joined the list of Western countries sanctioning Russia. The ruling party said this would have devastated the country’s economy, which was still recovering from the pandemic, not to mention possible aggression in Georgia’s territories given the results of the 2008 war.
Coupled with the ongoing crisis of freedoms in the country, Georgia is increasingly resembling the Russian model of government, Ian Kelly and David J. Kramer wrote in a May 2022 article in Bullwark.com. “The Georgian Dream government seems to base its decisions not on whether policies promote integration with Western norms, but on whether they might anger the dictator in the Kremlin. In its domestic policies, the government has consistently usurped all reins of power in all three branches of government, marginalizing or dismantling institutions that could control that power. This was particularly evident in their refusal to implement the reforms demanded by the US, Europe and NGOs to ensure an independent judiciary,” the authors wrote.
