This is the story of two young people, proudly carrying the flag of the European Union, confronting with their bare hands police forces abusing their powers, facing Russian soldiers invading their territory. It is the story of a Ukrainian and a Georgian, with linked fates, who dream of a democratic, European future, detached from Russian imperialism.
There is an air of deja vu these days in the streets of Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. These images of tens of thousands of young and old expressing their dissatisfaction with their government certainly remind us of those of Kyiv in the winter of 2013-2014, the months of Euromaidan. Winter during which nearly 4 million Ukrainians took to the streets of the capital, but also in those of Donetsk, Sevastopol, Odessa, Kherson, to protest against the pressures of the Kremlin on ex-president Yanukovych to sever ties with Europe.
On February 28, 2022, in the wake of the Russian invasion, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia submitted an official application to join the European Union. However, unlike the first two, Georgia did not obtain the status of candidate country for the summit in Brussels on this subject in June 2022. It would have some catching up to do in terms of institutional reforms. Reforms which are hampered, among other things, by the anti-European positions of several circles of Georgian power.
The Russian spectrum
These orientations are manifested today in the Georgian Parliament, led by Prime Minister Irakli Garibachvili, an oligarch who made his fortune in Russia. The latter adopted, in first reading, two bills obliging civil organizations and the media to register as “agents of foreign influence”. Inspiration?
Russia. In 2012, Moscow adopted a similar liberticidal text, on “foreign agents”, aimed at sanctioning any foreign support for an organization working on Russian territory. Since then, he has mainly been used to imprison political opponents, which is also feared in Tbilisi.
Laws “incompatible”, according to Human Rights Watch, with “standards of freedom of expression and association”. These texts have sparked strong anger and demonstrations in the streets of Georgian cities. At first peaceful, they mainly led to clashes between the police and the population. “No to the Russian law”, chant the demonstrators. Water cannons, tear gas and physical violence: this is what awaits a free people aspiring to Europe and democracy. On the morning of March 9, Parliament promised to withdraw these laws, but nothing is certain. The people continue to demonstrate and demand a complete change of government as well as early elections, which testifies to the general discontent.
European ambitions
Certainly the question of NATO arises. Certainly, guarantees of security and collective defence. Certainly, strategic interests. However, what many experts struggle to understand is that both Ukrainians and Georgians want above all a European, democratic future. The demands come from below: respectively, 91% and 85% of the population support joining the European Union. Citizens wish first and foremost to turn their backs on their imperialist neighbor, and are ready to lay down their lives to join the project of European integration.
Then, as societies with democracy so much at heart, who are we to say no? Who are we to force these freedom-hungry nations to lay down their arms? To stop protesting? To submit to Russian authoritarianism?
European and then more widely Western support for Ukraine and Georgia is remarkable and exceptional, but has shortcomings. Certain insufficiencies which crystallize in political divisions, within States which have moved far too far from the initial projects of Jean Monnet and Maastricht. It should be remembered that if Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, it was in response to its European ambitions. If it did the same in 2014 then in 2022 in Ukraine, it is for the same reasons. From the beginning, it has always been about Europe.
We must therefore fight alongside these future European citizens with heart in their stomachs, in the face of missiles and rubber projectiles. For the future of these countries whose history is being played out, for human rights, and to fight against Russian imperialism. Because in the manner of Simone Veil, first woman president of the European Parliament, the Georgians and the Ukrainians, the hope, it is in Europe that they place it.