In recent months, Georgia, considered for decades to be a staunch trans-Atlantic ally, has been heading toward a breaking point in its relations with the West. Though Georgian public opinion remains pro-NATO and pro-EU, the governing Georgian Dream (GD) party has come into sharp conflict with Washington and Brussels. One issue was the Russian-style “foreign agents” bill passed by GD in March. In response, the EU placed Georgia’s accession on “de facto” halt and ended financial aid to Georgia’s military.

The official Georgian position on the war in Ukraine has been another key factor in the falling out between Washington, Brussels and Tbilisi and a major driver of the dissatisfaction and concern within Georgia surrounding GD. The party’s opponents have long criticized it for a supposedly dovish stance toward Russia, with many labeling GD as pro-Russian. However, that is an oversimplification of GD rhetoric on Russia and the Russia-Ukraine war – it is more complex, more attuned to local circumstances and encompasses more than simply a pro-Russian perspective. Explicitly pro-Russian actors in Georgia do exist, but they remain marginal.

A May 2024 study concluded that, though official Georgian statements often condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian elites, along with the West collectively, are constructed as threats to be defended against in GD rhetoric. Specifically, GD elites have offered a narrative that a vague coalition of American, European and Ukrainian elites are cooperating with local opposition parties to force Georgia to open a second front in the Russia-Ukraine war. This, it is claimed, is the true reason that Western and Ukrainian leaders have expressed dissatisfaction with Georgia’s approach to Russia, whereby Tbilisi has not put in place economic sanctions or provided Kyiv with weapons. GD has labeled the United National Movement, the largest opposition party in the country, the “war party” and leveraged the memory of the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict to pitch themselves as the only alternative to open war with Russia.

As we said yesterday, there is a clear, coordinated effort to involve Georgia in a military conflict, which we will not allow. This effort is coordinated from Georgia by the National Movement, which, as everyone knows, has many representatives in the Ukrainian government, including in among those close to the president.

Public statement, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, March 2, 2022

With a parliamentary election coming up in October, GD rhetoric has grown more intense in recent months. The man widely believed to be the party’s informal leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who maintained a relatively low profile in recent years, has been holding large rallies and deploying conspiracy theories. In two major speeches since April, he has endorsed an evolved version of the “second front” idea.

Now, Ivanishvili, along with other GD figures, rail against what they term the “global war party,” which he describes as having “first forced the confrontation of Georgia with Russia and then put Ukraine in even worse peril,” adding that “NGOs and the radical opposition are acting on their behalf.” Ivanishvili associates the “global war party” with the West while attributing a rootless global nature to it – for instance, he claims that “the global war party has considerable influence on today’s American and European bureaucracy.”

Though GD appears to be acting in line with Moscow’s interests, it would be inappropriate to call its rhetoric explicitly pro-Russian. Still, the most conspiratorial rhetoric deployed by GD represents a transformation of Russia’s role: the primary threat to Georgia is no longer portrayed as Russia – whose role, if anything, has been minimized in the current GD discourse – but the “global war party,” backed by enemies at home and their allies in the West. At the same time, GD does not defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, aside from one high-profile instance where a former GD prime minister opined that NATO expansion was “one of the main reasons” for the war.