Tens of thousands gather to stand up to Putin in Georgia

Tens of thousands of protesters have gathered in Georgia after a pro-Putin party claimed victory in an allegedly rigged election. The election has been denounced as ‘stolen’ by the pro-Western opposition, while Georgia’s president Salome Zurabishvili alleged that the vote was rigged using ‘sophisticated’ methods she linked to Russia.

The Caucasus country – rocked by mass protests earlier this year – has plunged into political uncertainty since Saturday’s vote, with Brussels, Washington, France and Germany condemning ‘irregularities’. The ruling Georgian Dream has for months been accused by the opposition of steering Tbilisi away from its goal of joining the EU and back into Russia’s orbit. Some 20,000 people gathered outside the main parliament building in central Tbilisi on Monday evening after the opposition called for protests. One protester, Soso, 31, told the Mail he had come to demonstrate despite the risk of violence because ‘I owe it to my country’.

‘The elections were rigged, no two ways about that – whoever says that every second person in this country is pro Russian, which is what the election results show, is either lying or an idiot. Whatever happens, I will for my bit to make sure the future that this country deserves – a European future – becomes a reality. If you look around, we are many. Many more will come yet. We won’t give up, they won’t get away with that.’ A grandmother who attended with her grandson said: ‘I am here for him – so that his future, a better future than I had, is not stolen. I don’t want a Russian future for him. We had enough of that, I lived in the Soviet Union, my daughter lived in the horrid nineties, where Russia lorded over us. We paid the price.’

Georgia’s pro-European president Zurabishvili (pictured) claimed the use of ‘quite sophisticated’ fraudulent schemes in the weekend vote. The president had earlier declared the election results ‘illegitimate’, alleging a ‘Russian special operation’ to interfere with the election – a claim swiftly rejected by the Kremlin, whose spokesman Dmitry Peskov said ‘there was no intervention’. ‘It’s very difficult to accuse a government, and that’s not my role, but the methodology is Russian,’ Zurabishvili said, adding that it was ‘difficult to deal with’ Russia’, which she called ‘threatening’.

According to results announced by the electoral commission, the Georgian Dream party won nearly 54 per cent of the vote, compared with the just about 38 per cent garnered by a union of four pro-Western opposition alliances. Bidzina Ivanishvili (pictured), the pro-Russian oligarch who founded Georgian Dream, declared victory before the polls even closed. Giorgi Badridze, former Georgian ambassador to the UK, told the Mail: ‘The reverberations of Russia’s victory will be felt not just by Georgians and Russia’s other neighbours, but globally.’ Ghia Khukhashvili, a former advisor to Ivanishvili who is now one of his biggest critics, believes his country won’t give up.

‘We have been fighting this war our entire lives and shouldn’t surrender now,’ he said. ‘Losing a battle doesn’t mean losing the war. The war rages on – and we shall fight on.’ A group of Georgia’s leading election monitors told a news conference Monday that they had uncovered evidence of complex, large-scale fraud that altered the election outcome in favour of the ruling party. They called for a swift investigation and demanded the annulment of at least 15 percent of all the votes cast in the elections, claiming to have documented evidence of election rigging at dozens of polling stations. Defying the EU’s concerns over the vote, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – current holder of the bloc’s rotating presidency and the Kremlin’s closest EU associate – arrived Monday for a two-day visit to Tbilisi.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on Monday insisted EU membership remained a ‘main priority’ for his party and said he expected a ‘reset’ with Brussels. The announced result gave Georgian Dream 89 seats in the 150-member parliament – enough to govern but short of the supermajority it had sought to pass a constitutional ban on all the main opposition parties. The opposition has refused to concede defeat to a party it accuses of pro-Kremlin authoritarianism. Opposition politicians have said they will renounce their mandates and will not enter the newly elected parliament. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken blasted ‘misuse of public resources, vote buying, and voter intimidation’ which he said ‘contributed to an uneven playing field’.

An EU parliament mission said the vote was evidence of Tbilisi’s ‘democratic backsliding’, adding that it had seen instances of ‘ballot box stuffing’ and the ‘physical assault’ of observers. Germany’s foreign ministry condemned ‘significant irregularities’ and France also expressed ‘concerns’ over ‘irregularities observed before and during the vote’, urging a full investigation. Tbilisi had already been rocked by massive demonstrations this year over several laws passed by Georgian Dream that the opposition denounced as repressive. Political analyst Ghia Nodia said he expected ‘large-scale protests’ but not ‘serious upheaval’. ‘I anticipate Georgian Dream will launch a full-scale offensive against opponents, civil activists, and independent media,’ he said.

Orban, who has retained ties to Moscow despite the 2022 Ukraine invasion, tweeted a message of support for the Georgian government on his arrival in Tbilisi on Monday evening. ‘Georgia is a conservative, Christian and pro-Europe state. Instead of useless lecturing, they need our support on their European path,’ Orban wrote. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has warned that Orban on this visit ‘does not represent’ the bloc on foreign affairs. Orban congratulated Georgian Dream on an ‘overwhelming victory’ on Saturday after conflicting exit polls and before preliminary results were published.

Other EU figures condemned the vote – with some backing the call of the opposition. ‘The President of Georgia has announced that the parliamentary elections were falsified. Europe must now stand with the Georgian people,’ Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on X Sunday. Opposition parties lined up to denounce the vote. ‘This is an attempt to steal Georgia’s future,’ said Tina Bokuchava, leader of ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement. Nika Gvaramia, leader of the liberal Akhali party, said the way the vote was held constituted ‘a constitutional coup’ by the government.

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