Georgia has a choice to make. It must choose Europe – this matters for the West

Tbilisi is heading for the polls this month. The country’s president explains why this may be the most consequential vote since independence

Salome Zourabichvili, soon to become Georgia’s last popularly elected president, is nursing a cold when I meet her at the Orbeliani palace in Tbilisi on a scalding afternoon. 
Gombora, the president’s handsome dog, is occupying one of the chairs in the sitting area of her elegantly furnished office. Zourabichvili’s career is unique in the annals of international politics. She was born in Paris, in 1952, to a distinguished family of Georgian emigres. 
Rising steadily through the French foreign service, she was appointed ambassador to Georgia in 2003. It was a historic and hopeful year in her ancestral homeland: Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet Union’s last foreign minister and independent Georgia’s second president, peacefully ceded power to his erstwhile minister Mikheil Saakashvili in the Rose Revolution.
The new president offered Zourabichvili the foreign minister’s job. Paris granted her a special dispensation, and she thrived in her new job. She even succeeded in persuading the Russians to vacate their troops from Georgian territory. Saakashvili and his allies could not abide her accomplishments. 
In 2005, Zourabichvili – arguably the most successful occupant of her office – was sacked. She went into opposition and Georgia quickly reverted to old ways. 
Saakashvili, having overhauled the administration, purged the state of the remnants of its Soviet past, and intensified Georgia’s modernisation, became a casualty of his own hubris. He misinterpreted the cordiality of Western leaders for as a cast-iron guarantee of all-weather support, walked into the Kremlin’s trap by initiating an unwinnable war against Russia, lost territory, and made up for the humiliation of defeat by tormenting his own people. 
Corruption returned at the highest levels, businesses were seized, the opposition was harried, and torture became prevalent. 
Prosperous businesspersons and ordinary citizens still tremble at the memory of Saakashvili’s last years in office. “At first Saakashvili was like a ray of hope,” one Tbilisi businessman told me. “Then he became Lavrentiy Beria, real scum of a human being.” 
Bidzina Ivanishvili, a reclusive plutocrat with a reputation for anonymous philanthropy, watched his country’s degeneration from his glass palace atop Mount Mtatsminda. Georgians revered Ivanishvili for his charity. But his immense fortune – roughly a third of Georgia’s $15 billion GDP – made him an endangered species as Saakashvili grew wild and wanton. Ivanishvili cast himself in the role of his country’s saviour and stormed into politics. His Georgian Dream party, floated in 2012, annihilated the old order in the elections that followed. 
In 2018, Georgian Dream backed Zourabichvili’s independent candidacy for president. But anyone who believed that she would be malleable was courting disappointment. She invigorated the presidency, which had been reduced to a largely ceremonial function by then, and began dissenting from the new rulers. She reminded them by her actions that she was independent. 
Europe and Ukraine became the flashpoints in the intensifying strife with a government that evinced little enthusiasm for either. Zourabichvili even defied the government to travel to foreign capitals to drum up support for what she calls Georgia’s “European future”. 
Last year, the government tried to impeach her – and failed. Since then, she has become nothing if not more vocal in her denunciation of what she decries – without, it must be noted, a shred of hard evidence – as a “pro-Russian” regime. 
And as violent protests erupted in Georgia against the “foreign agents” legislation – which effectively enjoins NGOs and independent media in receipt of foreign funding to register as agents advancing the “interests of foreign powers” – Zourabichvili emerged as the highest champion of their cause. She vetoed the law, but parliament overturned her veto.
There is no proof that the law was dictated by the Kremlin – even Ivanishvili’s most trenchant critics concede privately that he is his own man, and Georgian Dream enjoys significant support among reflexively anti-Russian Georgians – but on the streets it is denounced as the “Russian law”. 
Zourabichvili has two months left in office. Her successor will be chosen by an electoral college, not elected by the public. She warns that this month’s election in Georgia is of existential significance, but she is also upbeat. She rejects the wisdom that Georgian Dream will be re-elected at the polls on October 26 and is busy mobilising the diaspora to participate in the elections. 
In our conversation, Zourabichvili ranged widely, from Russia and the Caucasus to Europe and China, but her principal preoccupation remains clearing Georgia’s path to Europe. 
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Kapil Komireddi: You described the upcoming election on October 26 as potentially the “last chance election” that this country may have. What did you mean by that? It was reported in Georgia Today, the English newspaper.
Salome Zourabichvili: I’ve never said that. I’ve never considered that it will be the “last election”. I consider it is a referendum on the European future of Georgia and the past or some unknown future, and I’m confident that the Georgian people will choose their European future, as they have done in the past, both during the independence and before. I’m confident, and cautiously optimistic, but I certainly don’t think that it’s the “last election”.
KK: But is there a fear that the ruling party could steal the election? Were you warning about that? 
SZ: I’m not saying that, either, because I think that when there is a clear mobilisation of the people – that’s what our history tells us – then there is no fraud and no rigging of the elections that can overcome a determined population. And the Georgian population has shown twice in the very recent period, last year and this year, both in March and April, what it wants, and very clearly. Now it’s very clear also that we have to confirm it in the elections, and that’s what’s going to happen in October.
KK: Is there fear among people – do you perceive a fear that there will be rigging?
SZ: No, it’s not a fear, it’s a conviction that they will certainly rig the elections. We have a very rich history of rigging elections. But if there is a mobilisation of the population, [vote rigging] is never enough to change the direction of the elections. And in this case, we have two reasons to be even more optimistic. One is that the young people of Georgia, who have never been very keen on voting, are going to go out massively to vote, because they have been the ones on the streets. That’s half a million people. 
Second is the diaspora, which is one million or more voters. They might not be able to vote in massive numbers because the authorities are not giving them the means to go and vote easily. But they certainly are going to vote in bigger numbers than they did in any previous elections. At the last election, there were 17,000 people voting from the diaspora of one million people. It’s not always easy for them to vote. They may have work commitments, or they may not have the time off. 
But this time, they consider, as we do, as I do, that what is at stake is the future of the Georgia – the European future, the democratic future, the national future – because this really is an existential referendum. So, they’re going to be much more involved in these elections than they have ever been, and we already see mobilisation in countries outside, in Europe and in the United States, where there are efforts to help people travel to the capital cities, the only place where they can vote. 
The authorities have refused to open any other voting booths apart from the ones in the embassy, which shows how scared they are of the votes of the diaspora. All of this shows where the population stands. Yes, you can try to rig it, but this has a clear limit. And I think that if one looks at the authorities and the way they have been behaving over the past weeks, it suggests that even their own polls, which they do not publicise, show where the Georgian population stands. So all of this is a reason for me to be optimistic and not to be fearful.
KK: You’re the last president of Georgia with a personal mandate. You have a popular mandate. You were elected by the people. This invests you with a certain moral authority. Are you taking part in the mobilisation of the diaspora? Are you personally involved?
SZ: I am, and I’m going to be even more involved. I am, in a way, the informal representative of the diaspora, because my family was in the diaspora. I was raised there, and I came back from the diaspora. I hope that a clear and bright future of Georgia will do the same for that community – to make them think that they too can come back to the country and be part of the development of this country. So, yes, I’ve been involved. We have been working from the administration to reach out to the diaspora and to explain what they have to do as far as the procedures are concerned. I’m not involved in the campaign in favour of any of the parties. Since I am in Georgia the leader of the European platform, which gathers all the parties that have signed the European Georgian Charter for Europe, I’m involved in that campaign, the referendum campaign, but subtlety – without campaigning for any specific party and campaigning for what I see as the only possible future for Georgia. 
KK: It’s pretty clear where you stand. You stand against the ruling party.
SZ: As long as the ruling party is against the Europe, yes, certainly! And I offered them, at the very beginning of this process, to come and discuss the European Charter, first of all, and then to sign it. But since they didn’t even come to propose their views on the Charter, it was clear that they were not going to sign it. And now, the more we go into the pre-electoral campaign period, the more it is clear that they’re not pro-European. So, of course, if they are not pro-European, if they’re playing a kind of Russian game –
KK: They claim they are pro-European.
SZ: I’m not judging by the claims. I’m judging by the facts. And the fact is that, since we got the European candidate status – which they did not do much to get, but we got it because our partners wanted to keep Georgia afloat, so to speak – since then, every move of theirs has been anti-European. All the rhetoric has been anti-European. Everything has been done to please Russia. I cannot understand why and how an occupied country, as Georgia is – 20 per cent of our territory is occupied [by Russia] – can play this role. I understand caution – that has been the play of Georgia between many empires, to be cautious. But between “cautious” and “collaborationist”, there is a very big difference, and that’s where we are today. 
KK: You’re saying the Georgian government is collaborating with Russia? 
SZ: That’s how it looks to the population of Georgia, because when you take every step in order to please Russia rather than to defend Georgia’s interests – whether it is the positions on the war in Ukraine; whether it is the position on the war in Georgia, which now they’re exposing; whether it’s the positions on the Russian law, which is something that only Russia and pro-Russian countries have adopted – all of these facts point to the direction of collaborating with Russia.
KK: You’ve spent a lifetime in diplomacy and were an exceedingly distinguished diplomat before you entered politics. Wouldn’t it be rather reckless to take actions that might antagonise Russia? 
SZ: That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I told you moments ago. I understand caution, and I’ve been the only – probably the only – Georgian politician or political figure in the recent past to have negotiated with Russia, achieved an outcome at negotiation, and had that outcome transformed into action. I have never been in favour of provoking Russia or fostering antagonism. However, there’s a clear difference between being cautious and protecting Georgia’s interests and using rhetoric that ultimately benefits a country occupying part of your territory.
KK: There are clear dividing lines between Europe and Russia right now. Simply put, Europe is anti-Russia and Russia is anti-Europe. At this moment, for you to race to join the European family would amount to joining a family that is against Russia, wouldn’t it? 
SZ: That’s a very simplistic way of putting it.
KK: But wouldn’t it jeopardise Georgia’s position?
SZ: What does that mean? Georgia is not neutral, has never adopted a fully neutral stance. We’ve always sought to build strong friendships and alliances because Georgia values its partnerships. And what is the most dangerous for Georgia is to be isolated. Isolating itself from friends is something in its whole history Georgia has never done – until today. 
Being a partner of Europe or of the United States, having friends that help you to develop the country, has been the norm for the past 30 years. That is in no way jeopardising Georgia. That’s a very Russian narrative, to say that you’re a friend of my foes. Nobody is a foe to Russia: Russia started an aggression in Ukraine, and Russia started to be aggressive with the Western powers. Russia started the war in Georgia. Russia started all the wars with its neighbours in the recent contemporary history. 
So all these narratives – that whatever you do, whatever steps you take, might be something that is against Russia – give Russia the legitimacy to start anything against you. This is something that is both very simplistic and very untrue.
KK: You’ve taken on some very serious powers. You’re effectively the lone voice in your country, the lone voice of authority arguing the positions you’re arguing with certainty and clarity. 
SZ: But I’m not the lone voice. I am the voice of the people. I am the voice of the people that were on the streets in Spring this year, in March last year. I am, very clearly, the voice of the young people. When I go out on the streets – something I do not fear, unlike the officials of the government – I am greeted by the young. In fact, the younger they are, the warmer they are, which is very reassuring when I think about the future of this country. If it’s not me, it will be somebody else, because this country is not going to lose its future to the hands of people that do not have Georgia’s national interest at heart.
KK: In October, there will be a new election. If the incumbent government is returned to power, a few months after that, in December, you will step down –
SZ: I do not think that they will win the elections. I do not see any sign that they can win the elections. And all my activity today and my vision of this country is based on the fact that our European future and democratic future will win the elections, not any specific party, but this bright future. Most of the people, if we talk about “if”, most of the young people will leave Georgia if it were any different. That’s why I’m convinced that it won’t be different.
KK: You will step down come what may in December. You’ve just said that you have been the voice of the pro-European contingent in Georgia and you have been the voice of the young. When you step down, what are you going to do? Have you thought about your future? 
SZ: There is no “when” I step down, there is no “if”. Our focus is October 26. And I only believe that we’re going to win the elections.
KK: Do you expect to serve another term as president? Is that possible? 
SZ: I don’t know. 
KK: Would you be open to the idea of serving another term? 
SZ: I am certainly open to any form in which I can serve the objective – which is also the objective of the elections in October – to return to the European path. That means to guide this country into the opening of the negotiations with Europe in the same way as Ukraine and Moldova have done. Once that’s done, I consider that my job is done. In what way I will do that job is another question.
KK: If it doesn’t happen, do you expect to go back to the trenches and fight the government?
SZ: I don’t expect anything. I expect the Georgian people will win the elections, and they will not, certainly, have to go through any form of trenches. 
KK: You say Georgian Dream will not win. The alternative is President Saakashvili, with whom you have a bit of history. 
SZ: No, he’s not the alternative. In fact, Saakashvili is not any longer very relevant. His party is one of the parties that are on European platform, but that is only one of them. There are many others. There are two, three other clear political forces that are part of this European platform, and the future will be a form of coalition between these political parties. 
My view, and what is inscribed in the Charter we have signed up to, is that in the first year, the one I’m concerned with, which should lead us to the opening of European negotiations, there should be a short-term Parliament and a technical government. You’re from India, you’ve seen what happened in Bangladesh. And that’s not the only example. 
When there is a crisis in the country, as we have now, there is widespread distrust of political parties and politicians. I think, we need a time off during which these political parties can form a coalition in parliament to get the job done and bring us back to the negotiating table. A technical government should handle current affairs and focus on restoring confidence – both internally, with the people’s trust in politics, and externally, with our international partners, whose trust has been seriously eroded.  
And the other very important aspect of this technical government is that it’s a direct way to achieve depolarisation, one of the requests that we have from the European Union. And there is nothing that can depolarise more than people who come from the civil society and who are going to deal with the business at hand rather than ideologically oppose each other.
KK: You’re forging a new friendship with China, which is, straight up, an adversary of the West. The degree of China’s penetration into Georgia is astonishing. How do you view that? Do you view that with alarm?
SZ: I think that, first of all, we have to, at some point in time, get out of the zero-sum game, which says, you’re friendly with this power, so you cannot be friends with that power. We are in a very complicated region. I remember a time in 2004, when President George W. Bush visited Georgia and was acclaimed by the whole population. 
Months after his visit, the president of Iran visited Georgia. And the Americans had no problem with that, because they understood that it’s a region in which you have to have some relations. I think that we can have some forms of business with China. The whole world clearly has some form of business with China, and many of our friends more than some business, because China is a very big power that is present almost everywhere. So we’re not going to fight the fights of others. 
At the same time, because of our national interest, and not because of how our partners view China, and because of the examples we’ve seen of how China or Chinese companies behave towards small countries when they do not pay their debts, I think that we should be much more cautious than what we’ve seen from the present government in our dealings with China. 
So it’s not a question of exclusion. It’s a question of being very careful when writing up contracts, not accepting contracts that are confidential, which is the case in many of the public contracts that China signs, and being very careful about the debt conditions that are put into the terms and certainly being very careful with strategic assets such as ports or airports or key highways. It’s not a black-and-white picture. It’s about governing this country responsibly. And when you do that, you take measures that preserve the national interests of this country for the long term, and not immediate gains. 
KK: You spoke against neutrality a short while ago when talking about the Ukraine war and about the importance of taking a position. I just wanted to ask you – Georgia was neutral when Armenia, your immediate neighbour, was attacked in 2020.  
SZ: That’s a different type of neutrality. We’re neutral between our two neighbours with which we have had excellent relations over centuries. We have two communities, each numbering about 200,000, living on our border with each country and in this region. We have been the guarantor of peace. We have never had our communities choosing one against the other. The conflict didn’t play out on the Georgian territory. It’s very important that in the Caucasus somebody keeps that balance. It has been highly appreciated by both those countries that we didn’t try to fight the war of the other. And there is no other alternative to this.
KK: Even when Armenia’s territorial integrity is threatened by Azerbaijan? 
SZ: There is no way Georgia can take a stand between those two countries, because we are part of these very small Caucasus in which we have to keep the stability. And the only keeper of stability over centuries has been Georgia. 
Again, what I’m saying is that both countries understand this neutrality – if you want to call it that. But it’s different from Ukraine. Ukraine’s history has been similar to Georgia’s – facing the Russian empire, the Soviet empire, and its repressions.
And recently the occupation of and aggression against Georgia, the aggression against Crimea, the aggression again now against Ukraine. So there has to be solidarity. That doesn’t mean that we take up arms together with Ukraine. We cannot do that. And Ukrainians understand that very well. 
There are many other partners who can support them much more actively than Georgia. But moral solidarity has to be there, because we have had moral solidarity from Ukraine, including during the first [Russian] war against Georgia that everybody has forgotten, which was at the time of the independence, when Russia used separatist conflicts against Georgia and when Ukraine was siding very effectively with Georgia.
Kapil Komireddi is the author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, which was recently published in a revised and updated paperback edition by Hurst. Follow him on X.com/@kapskom