Election rally of the Georgian Dream party at the Freedom Square in Tbilisi Credit: Davit Kachkachishvili/Getty Images

Victor Swezey.  Charles Gorrivan

25 October 2024

On blood-red billboards across Tbilisi, a mysterious hand holds a bundle of leashes tied around the necks of Georgia’s most prominent opposition figures.

The advertisement reads “No war! No agents!” and is the latest attempt by the ruling Georgian Dream party to cast its critics as puppets of sinister foreign powers. Billionaire party leader Bidzina Ivanishvili has repeatedly warned of a “Global War Party”, which he claims is plotting to use Georgia to open a second front in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Voters will decide whether to endorse Georgian Dream’s framing of the election as a choice between war and peace in a high-stakes parliamentary election on Oct 26. The major opposition parties have campaigned on rebuilding Georgia’s ties with the European Union and the United States, which have accused Georgia of abandoning democratic values.

The conspiratorial ad follows another controversial campaign featuring black-and-white photos of bombed-out churches, buses and public buildings in Ukraine. The reminders of the destruction wrought by Russia’s war in Ukraine appear next to colourful pictures of newly built Georgian infrastructure.

Georgian Dream’s invocations of conflict are potent in a country that in 2008 was invaded by its northern neighbour, which continues to occupy one-fifth of its territory.

“This is something that they see, that they feel”, Ketevan Chachava, an analyst at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, said at a recent press briefing. “We remember how horrible war can be”.

Backlash from Kyiv

The images of devastated Ukrainian cities have triggered backlash from Kyiv, which previously withdrew its ambassador from Georgia for refusing to take a hard line against Russia.

Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement that it “condemns and considers unacceptable using in political advertising the images of terrible consequences of Russia’s ruthless war against Ukraine”.

In an interview on his campaign bus, Giorgi Vashadze, a member of parliament who leads a party in the largest opposition coalition, described Georgian Dream’s tactics as “dirty”. Badri Japaridze, co-founder of the opposition Lelo party, said the ads are part of an “ugly hatred campaign”.

Georgian Dream did not respond to a request for a comment on its recent advertisements.

Though Georgian Dream took power in 2012 championing a European path, it has recently taken a Eurosceptic turn. European integration is overwhelmingly popular in Georgia, with 79 per cent of Georgians expressing support for EU membership, according to a National Democratic Institute survey last year.

As Georgia’s leaders appear to warm to the Kremlin, the EU has frozen the country’s once-hopeful prospects of joining the bloc. The Georgian government in May passed a Russian-style law requiring NGOs receiving over 20 per cent of their funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents” amid fierce street protests, prompting the EU to halt its accession process.

Georgia’s souring relations with the West have been lauded in Russia, with the country’s foreign minister recently praising Georgian Dream for rejecting Western influence.

Meanwhile, the major opposition parties have struggled to respond to Georgian Dream’s alarmism over a potential war with Russia, according to Chachava of the Centre for European Policy Analysis.

“The message of peace has been very powerful”, Chachava said.

Opposition party For Georgia, which split from Georgian Dream in 2021, has emphasised that cooperation with Western strategic partners is the best guarantee of Georgia’s safety, said member of parliament Ana Buchukuri.

“Each and every time Georgian Dream is talking about peace, pardon my French, but this is just bull”, Ms Buchukuri said.

Damaging relations with Europe

In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Georgian president Salome Zourabichvili, who split with Georgian Dream over its anti-Western messaging, highlighted the danger she saw in damaging relations with Europe.

“What is the most dangerous for Georgia is to be isolated”, Ms Zourabichvili said.

The opposition parties have roughly a week left to convince voters to grant them a constitutional majority. In a September poll from Edison Research, Georgian Dream led with 32 per cent of the vote, while the leading opposition coalition Strength in Unity received 17 per cent.

For Ms Zourabichvili, the election is a complete referendum on Georgia’s prospects for European integration: “I’m confident that the Georgian people will choose their European future”, she said.

Yet Rusiko Kobakhidze, who researches propaganda at the nonprofit Soviet Past Research Laboratory, sees Georgian Dream’s latest campaign advertisements as a sign that the party would rather return the country to the past.

Georgian Dream is borrowing tactics from Soviet-era propaganda to construct boogeymen like the “Global War Party”,  according to Kobakhidze. The leashed opposition figures in the party’s newest political advertisements mirror images of anti-Bolshevik leaders as dogs that date back to the Russian civil war, she said.

“Georgian Dream repeats the same rhetoric that comes from the Soviet tradition, which is buried in the collective memory of the Soviet people”, Ms Kobakhidze said. “By tracing it, old traumas are brought back to life.”