cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/3323412

Archived version

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili warned that Russia’s evolving sophisticated hybrid strategy in Georgia could have wider geopolitical consequences for Europe if the bloc loses the country it had granted candidate status. She received an enthusiastic reception from the audience, with her speech interrupted several times by applause.

Speaking at the French Renaissance party rally in Paris on 6 April, Zurabishvili urged the European Union to act decisively against authoritarian influences within its ranks.

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“The European Union must be able to show that it can take decisions, that it can have a coherent policy and that it can speak out — that it is not in the hands of several countries that are already well on the path to advancing totalitarianism,” she said, in an apparent reference to Viktor Orban’s Hungary, which is blocking EU efforts against the Georgian Dream.

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Zurabishvili argued that President Vladimir Putin’s all-out war in Ukraine had failed and that Russia is now testing a “new strategy” in Georgia – one characterized by “less cost” and “less direct attack.”

She said Georgia has become a “testing ground” for this hybrid strategy, citing “sophisticated” electoral manipulation and a “proxy oligarch”, a reference to Bidzina Ivanishvili, through whom she said Russia had achieved an “almost total usurpation” of the Georgian state.

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“This is a geopolitical challenge because the loss of Georgia (which is not and will not happen) is not insignificant. It’s the Black Sea, it’s the Caucasus, it’s the fate of European Armenia, it’s the route to Central Asia – it’s a region that deeply concerns you. But above all, it is a challenge for the EU.”

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Zurabishvili urged the defense of democracy on all fronts. “We have to defend democracy everywhere. This means, first of all, the European institutions; it’s a European rearmament, of course – but it’s also a moral rearmament, a political rearmament, the ability to make decisions together”.

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