Georgia’s European Identity and Russia’s Possible Pressure Points

This essay will focus on Russia’s revisionist foreign policy in its neighborhood and particularly in Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova, as these three states strive to get rid of Russian influence and become NATO and/or EU members. The essay will discuss a variety of Russian tools used against these states since the 1990s: hard diplomacy, energy and trade ‘wars’ and the use of military force but it will not discuss in depth Russian ‘soft power’ and ‘hybrid warfare’, due to the volume and scale of these issues. It will illustrate how Russia modernized its instruments of power due to the lessons learned in these states and how it turned them in to ‘hybrid warfare’ basket. In order to discuss the use of the Kremlin’s different kinds of power instruments in these states, this essay will first discuss the essence of Russia’s revisionism, its interests in what is known as its ‘near abroad,’ and explain the causes and reasons for the contradictions of Russia and the West in this area. In addition, the essay will examine Russia’s interests in keeping and maintaining conflicts in Georgia and Moldova in a ‘frozen’ situation since the 1990’s, the mechanisms of influence on these states arising from that instability, and how Russia uses the ‘compatriot’s’ policy in Georgia and Ukraine to justify the war and later annexation. After that, it will discuss and analyse the use of energy and trade leverage against Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine; in particular, the so called ‘Gas’ and ‘Trade wars’ as part of the economic pressures and what the consequences were and are. Last, but not least, this essay will examine the causes and outcomes of the use of military power in Georgia and Ukraine by Russia. Moreover, it will scrutinize the additional political instruments deployed afterwards by the Kremlin against Georgia in the diplomatic arena in order to strengthen the outcomes of the war. It will then review the similarities of Russian power projection between Georgia and Ukraine and provide some evidences as to how the Kremlin developed the technique of hybrid warfare based on lessons learned. Finally, this essay will argue that although Russia’s power projection is fairly mixed in Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova and the Kremlin’s main tactics in terms of future power projections in these states are based on ambiguity it is clear that Russia will continue to suppress these pro-Western states in order to maintain control over them and not to admit the West’s footprint in what Russia perceives to be its ‘spheres of influence’.

Connections: The Quarterly Journal, 2018

The Russian Federation believes that the post-Soviet region is strategically important and considers it to be the exclusive zone of its influence. Each of the former republics occupies a specific place in its foreign and security policy. In the following article the author has made an attempt to determine the place of Georgia and Ukraine in the aforementioned policy. It was made by analyzing Moscow's policy towards them, including actions that clearly enabled the implementation of a strategic political turn towards the West, which for the Kremlin would mean a gradual loss of influence in the area of the former USSR.

NUPI policy brief, 2020

After the crises in Ukraine, and despite the Georgian government’s allegedly more pragmatic attitude towards Russia, official statements from Moscow increasingly project Georgia as hostile. This may be the result of the Kremlin stepping up a propaganda campaign to put pressure on Georgia, but it is also linked to growing perceptions of Georgia as becoming an agent of NATO. Moreover, Russia’s increasingly insistent rhetorical and practical support for the independent status of the two Georgian breakaway republics, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, is still framed with reference to Kosovo as a tit-for-tat in a conflict with the West. In parallel with this hardening in Russian views, there is hardly any diplomatic contact between Russia and Georgia. The regional multilateral frameworks have become dysfunctional, obstructed by polarization. Further Georgian NATO integration could entail an increasing risk of war, unless frank discussions and engagement with Russia can be promoted

Connections Quarterly Journal, 2023

This article analyzes the shaping and transformation of the post-Soviet security thinking of Georgia and Ukraine in the context of the post-Soviet Russian foreign policy in the near abroad, often designated as a legitimate sphere of Russian influence, and the competition between Russia and the EU and the US in the region. After the Rose Revolution of Georgia and the Orange Revolution of Ukraine, these two countries' independent/pro-Western orientation became the main issues securitized by the Russian Federation. Correspondingly, the preservation of territorial integrity became the top security issue for Georgia (since the early 1990s), and it became so for Ukraine after the Crimean occupation (March 2014) and the renewed armed hostilities across the entirety of Ukraine since February 2022. The changes in the internal politics of these countries were transposed into the international competition between Russia and the EU/US, expressed through the clash of "Sovereign Democracy" and "Color Revolution" paradigms for the future of post-Soviet states in the 2010s and transformed into active military measures in Ukraine since 2020s and through the so-called creeping annexation of Georgia since 2010s. Practically, these are the tools of maintaining the Russian influence on the one hand and opposing the Western values and power influence, supported firstly by the European Neighborhood Policy and the Eastern Partnership projects and secondly by granting candidate status to Ukraine in 2022. Russia's military actions against Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014-2023), a response to the soft power applied by the West, aimed at the creation of buffer zones in the shape of "frozen conflicts," which could be used as indirect leverage in the hands of the Russian Federation to block the Western aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine.

Russia and the Former Soviet Space, Instrumentalizing Security, Legitimizing Intervention, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017

Russia's Geostrategic Activities in Eastern Europe, 2020

The majority of Georgians strongly reject the notion of going back under Russian influence. As a result, such a geopolitical realignment of Georgia cannot occur through a democratic and peaceful process. The end states in Georgia that would satisfy Moscow’s purposes could be its proxy nondemocratic regime in Tbilisi or Georgia’s collapse into a failed state (or possibly both of these outcomes simultaneously). It makes sense, therefore, that Russia has been consistently deploying a wide-ranging arsenal of activities aimed at undermining Georgia’s sovereignty, internal coherence and independent foreign policy.

AL-FARABI KAZAKH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY JOURNAL of history, №4 (91) , 2018

This article analyzes geopolitical interests of Kremlin in Georgia and South Caucasus. It also de- scribes Moscow’s actions to dominate and control this strategically important region. The threats coming from Russia are analyzed in detail. South Caucasus is the region where the economic and strategic inter- ests of the West and Russia collide with each other. Despite its small size, Caucasus is a very important region. It is an alternative energy corridor, which allows European Union and the West to reduce its energy dependence on Russia and gain access to energy rich regions of Caspian Basin and Central Asia. Kremlin’s aim is to establish firm control over the South Caucasus energy corridor and become the only supplier of oil and gas for the West. Another geopolitical objective of Kremlin is to strengthen Moscow- Yerevan-Tehran axis and weaken Ankara-Tbilisi-Baku axis.

2019

How Russia tries to influence post-Soviet Georgia to produce a negative view of the EU.

Politeja

The article views the geographical area between the EU and Russian borders as a battle space of two, drastically different foreign policy and ideological approaches. The authors argue that in the years since the end of the Cold War, a unique surrogate of former clash of liberal and communist worlds emerged, leading to and underpinning current Hybrid Warfare, underway from Ukraine to Georgia. Its roots lay in the Russian interpretation of the Western attitude towards the East as Neo-colonialist. Relying on the income from its vast energy resources, Russia also tries to develop its version of so called “Soft Power”, used by the West in this region. Though in Russian hands, it is coupled with Moscow’s imperial experiences and resentments, and is becoming a mere element in Hybrid or “non-linear” war. Speaking retrospectively, the Eastern Partnership Initiative of the European Union can be seen as a response to Hybrid threats, posed by Russia against its Western and Southern neighbors. B...