Georgia and Ukraine have a lot of similarities.
1. Both were part of the USSR and fall, broadly, into what is coined the "sphere of influence" of Russia.
2. Both are at different stages in their relationship with the West (and Russia) and Georgia's path/journey appears to inevitably walk down the same path as that of Ukraine, albeit 1-2 decades later.
Ukraine was encouraged (and willingly) looked ever westwards towards the EU and US (freedom democracy trade and all that good stuff) until in 2014 when a material shift in the proverbial chess board occurred. The US had successfully changed Ukraine from a Black piece to a White piece by way of a coup in Ukraine. What followed next is well known, the country had a 8 year civil war (the east of the country was not happy with what happened but lacked the ability to change the situation) and events culminated in Russia invading Ukraine, more on that at the end.
The current Ukrainian position is to seek to escalate the war by way of launching missile strikes deep into Russia in order to galvanize Russia into a response which in turn Ukraine hopes will drag the US and Nato more directly into the conflict, read: World War 3. How people are cheer-leading for this is beyond me, but here we are. The current Georgia position is that while some of its politicians accept the reality (they are geographically closer to Russia then they are to the US, and its not safe to move too far West) its people have for some time now been heavily influenced by outside NGO's / companies etc and believe that it is time to integrate more closely with the EU, Nato, The West, USA and all that freedom democracy and all that good stuff.
George first introduced its foreign agents law "Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence," in 2023. This law is similar to Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) which exists in the United States. That is to say, if you are working on behalf of an entity outside of the country, this must be declared. In response, almost....magically, there were mass protests against this law. Just think about that for a moment. Mass protests against a law, which wanted NGO's and companies to declare that they were acting at the behest of a foreign power. This to my mind shows that the grassroots strength of said NGO's is so strong, that it is inevitable that Georgia will have a western government (similar to the 2014 Ukraine Government) and that we will then see similar shenanigans such as joint military exercises between Georgia and Nato, followed by a bid to join Nato, followed by the real threat of Russia invading Georgia, again.
Lets step back to Russia for a moment:
When we were kids growing up, Iraq and Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Saddam bad, USA good. This was what I believed because thats how it was portrayed. We now know that the US practically invited its puppet dictator (Saddam) to invade Kuwait and then double crossed him. The rest as they say, is history. Then we had the Russia and the US. The US practically invited Russia to invade Ukraine and then double crossed Russia with what followed. If any of this is fantasy land news to you, I invite you to go read up about Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, Iraq and the US involvement.
cheers.
This post was edited by ferdia on Oct 30 2024 06:53am