EU and NATO are attempting to foment a Ukraine-style coup in Georgia

They're applying the Euromaidan playbook all over again

In a recent article, I predicted that, following the results of last month’s Georgian elections — won by the ruling Georgian Dream party, which advocates friendly political and economic relations with neighbouring Russia — the EU and NATO, desperate to transform Georgia into a second front in their proxy war against Russia, would apply to Georgia the same playbook as they did to Ukraine:

Just as in the lead-up to the 2014 coup in Kyiv, they’re first denying the legitimacy of the elected government, accusing it of being a Russian pawn. From there, they’re using Western-funded “NGOs” to mobilise the pro-EU minority against the government, while also pushing for sanctions. If the government still doesn’t yield to the pressure, they’ll try to move to the next phase: unrest in parliament and on the streets; a hoped-for police crackdown; and ultimately the toppling of the government and the appearance of a friendly pro-Western alternative. Certainly, influential Western foreign policy think tanks are already predicting exactly this scenario. In a recent article, the Atlantic Council argued that “Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary election has entered its ‘Maidan’ phase” — and that Western governments must “support the Georgian people in both the immediate period ahead and the longer term”. The NATO establishment’s aims couldn’t be clearer.

This is exactly what is happening; however, things are moving faster than I expected. Usually the protests start out peacefully, in order to build support both domestically and abroad, and then move on to the “insurrectionist” phase only if the nonviolent strategy doesn’t yield results. This is what happened with the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. In Georgia, however, it would appear that they’ve fast-forwarded straight to the latter phase. For several days, the capital Tbilisi has been rocked by violent protests involving molotov cocktails and retrofitted fireworks, and even direct attacks on the Parliament building.

The official trigger for the protests was the Georgian Dream government bloc’s announcement that it was halting the EU accession talks, a decision that is hardly surprising considering that the EU has been challenging the legitimacy of the elections from the day one, and effectively asking the government to step down as a condition for the continuation of the EU accession process (great diplomacy!). No wonder the government accuses the EU of using the prospect of accession talks to “blackmail” Georgia, and wanting to “organise a revolution in the country”. Recent events have confirmed this.

Following the violent protests, which have so far met a relatively soft-handed response from police — especially when compared to the standard response of Western security forces to much less violent protests — EU leaders have predictably expressed their solidarity with the demonstrators and ramped up threats against the government. They’re following every step of the Euromaidan script.

To make matters worse, the country’s staunchly pro-Western president Salome Zourabichvili has refused to step down when her term ends this month, accusing the parliament of being “illegitimate” and calling for new elections. This is the textbook definition of an attempted institutional coup, which Western governments would not hesitate to condemn if the roles were reversed. But Zourabichvili is an EU-NATO proxy — indeed, she’s spent most of her life working as a French diplomat, including as the country’s ambassador to Georgia, and only became a Georgian citizen in 2004 — so anything goes.

The situation in Georgia is potentially a very explosive one, and the risk of the country turning into another Ukraine — and therefore into another front in the EU-NATO war against Russia — exists. However, the situation in Georgia is also very different. For starters, Georgia fortunately lacks a large neo-Nazi and ultranationalist presence capable of mounting a serious armed insurrection against the government, as Ukraine did. But there also other reasons why fomenting a Ukraine-style coup in Georgia may prove challenging. Not only are most Georgians determined to avoid a Ukrainian scenario, for obvious reasons, but prime minister Kobakhidze has been “coup-proofing” the country for some time. In May, for instance, the government passed the “Transparency of Foreign Influence” law, mandating that any NGO receiving 20% or more of its funding from outside sources must register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power”.

So hopefully the Georgian government will succeed in resisting this foreign-funded attack. Yet the mere fact that the EU-NATO establishment is overtly attempting to overthrow a democratically elected government — primarily to destabilise Russia and its near abroad, while intensifying the conflict in Ukraine — serves as a striking example of how far Western leaders have strayed from reason. They have become an existential threat to the entire European continent.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

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