When Salome Zourabichvili left Georgia’s presidential palace to make way for her successor, the country’s fifth president said she was “taking legitimacy with her”. The end of Zourabichvili’s term came amid a period of ongoing mass unrest in the Caucasus country which began when the ruling Georgia Dream party — re-elected in a vote marred by allegations of mass electoral violations — suspended EU accession negotiations in November 2024.

Although Georgia’s ruling party voted in ex-footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili as the country’s sixth president in a single-candidate election in December, Zourabichvili is still seen by the opposition and much of civil society as the country’s legitimate president. 

In a conversation with bne IntelliNews, Zourabichvili laid out the complex reality of Georgia’s ongoing political crisis, and explained how the country has become a testing ground for both Russian hybrid interference and western diplomatic intervention.

bne IntelliNews: I’d like to start by talking about the current global, geopolitical situation and Georgia’s place within that. We’ve moved into a world where US President Donald Trump is displaying loyalty to Vladimir Putin’s Russia even before America and certainly before Europe. Given the current political situation in Georgia and its growing isolation from its Western allies, where do you think Georgia will fit into a united, stronger Europe that now needs to stand up to Trump?

Salome Zourabichvili: I don’t know whether the issue is to stand up to President Trump or whether it is to stand up to Russia. I think the objective of a stronger Europe is certainly to stand up to Russia.

It is very important that the new US administration and our European partners see that what is happening in Georgia is not a simple political crisis, or the [restoration], first progressively and then rapidly, of an autocracy. It’s much more an alternative strategy that Russia is designing to achieve its objectives, given that its military strategy in Ukraine has not been that successful. Russia has in fact in some ways achieved the contrary – the reinforcement of Nato with Finland and Sweden [joining in 2023 and 2024], and the reinforcement today of the European Union. 

So gradually Russia has been designing this hybrid strategy that is at work in Georgia which, through electoral manipulations, will achieve costless domination of a number of countries. [This strategy] is tested here [in Georgia] but not only here; also in Romania or in Moldova as we’ve seen, and maybe in future in Ukraine.

So, what is very important to see in Georgia, for those that want peace and to prevent new crises, is that this new Russian hybrid strategy can still be stopped without resorting to higher instability in the region. This is what we hope for from the US and the EU, that they see the reality of the situation here.

bne: Trump, it seems, has now demonstrated how easily he will abandon America’s European allies, primarily Ukraine. Can Georgia still longer rely on the White House for the help that it needs?

Zourabichvili: After the [war with Russia] in 2008 … We do not rely on the support of our partners for our destiny and independence.

We are continuing our protest, a very peaceful one, and we think that if peace is the objective, not just for us but for the general interests of US and European powers, then it is very important to prevent a new crisis erupting in Georgia in the process of attempting to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. The situation is two sides of the same coin. It is not a question of Georgia being abandoned: we have been moving towards European Union and towards Euro-Atlantic integration. We were not there yet but we were very close with the status of candidate. 

It should be a challenge for everyone that suddenly a country that was so close [to EU integration] was drawn back to something that is very close to not only Russian domination of Georgia, but of the Caucasus, of the Black Sea, and all the instability this would bring – I think nobody wants this.

bne: What could the impact of an unstable, unjust peace in Ukraine where Putin is granted concessions that would bolster his imperialist ambitions be on Georgia?

Zourabichvili: I’m not so sure that Russia is going to win the peace talks. It might get some concessions but not Mr Putin’s original war objective to take over the whole of Ukraine.

What Mr Putin is looking at is to attempt domination through a hybrid strategy with much fewer costs – costless practically. The test is in Georgia, then in future it might be Romania or Moldova and then it might be through elections in Ukraine. It’s through manipulation of elections and through foreign leaders’ submission [to Russia] that Russia is hoping to attain its objectives, precisely because it is not sure if it is guaranteed to win the peace talks. If it were guaranteed then Russia would not need an alternative strategy.

It's a global picture where we are going to see a lot of unpredictability. My guess would be that this unpredictability may have a very good effect on the Europeans – it means that the next step towards a real European defence is going to be taken. But this instability and unpredictability is also going to affect Russia, a country that might overplay their hand. Mr Putin might think that everything is fine for him, but I don’t think he can plan and foresee exactly how the new Trump administration is going to behave on many different issues. This unpredictable situation takes more flexibility, more adaption, more capacity to have political alternatives, which is not exactly how one would describe today’s Russia.

bne: How would you evaluate your own role within Georgia’s ongoing pro-EU civil resistance movement?

Zourabichvili: Externally I’m still representing the Georgia that has received [EU] candidate status and that has been steadily moving towards Europe for the last thirty years. Internally I have become the de facto leader, not directly of the protest movement as that is very much taking place on the ground, but of the coordination of the opposition.

This is not a united opposition because I think one thing that is very clear in Georgia is that nobody wants to go back to one-party rule, so all these ideas of having a single-party opposition is not very appealing to people. However, people are calling for more coordination of opposition forces, of civil society, and that is the role that I’m playing now – to defend those democratic principles, to defend Georgia’s role with its partners and to make clear to our partners that we need more support … more moral support in the first instance, because we know very well the limitations of our partners at this stage to take active measures that could help the protests. But they do have a diplomatic capacity which has not been used, and both the EU an US together should use this diplomatic capacity to try to find a solution [to the situation in Georgia].

The crisis is in fact a paralysis of the country, where the government is not governing but is just taking repressive measures. Civil society is continuing to protest. They have not been intimidated or stopped by these repressive measures, and this has been going on for almost five months. The country is suffering, the economy is suffering, tourism is going down, and there have been many other impacts due to the reduction in support programmes from the US and EU. These programmes were sustaining the [Georgian Dream] government as much as civil society; the idea that [support] was going only to NGOs is completely false.

This whole situation represents a standoff that can be solved in my view only through very active and inventive diplomacy to achieve the only peaceful way out of such a situation: a re-run of the October 2024 parliamentary elections. We have local elections planned for the autumn, and these should be accompanied by parliamentary elections.

bne: You recently presented a five-step plan for new elections which focuses on coordination and cooperation of political forces, transparency and fraud prevention… 

Zourabichvili: And the increased mobilisation of the people for preventing fraud following the experience they had in the October 2024 elections … Allow the Georgian diaspora to vote; this was artificially prevented in October. The legislation is there for our 1mn diaspora voters to be represented and be able to vote, and they should be allowed to vote. So there is a whole set of things that can be done differently in future elections.

Again, we depend on more active diplomacy from our partners because it’s in their interests, as well as very much in ours, to prevent the deepening of a crisis in Georgia that might turn into instability.

bne: What needs to happen in Georgia to reach a situation where the Georgian Dream party agrees to participate in a second round of parliamentary elections?

Zourabichvili: We are in a standoff. I don’t think any part will change by itself: the government is going to continue its repressive actions. On the other side the protesters [have] ups and downs. We’ve had a down period as we’ve had one of the most freezing winters ever in Georgia; spring is coming so the protests will certainly not be watered down as people have no way back. There are so many repressive measures that they can only continue their protest.

What can change this standoff and this crisis is a diplomatic intervention … and again that concerns the EU but also the Americans. If they want peace in Ukraine they cannot want a new crisis in Georgia.

bne: An Economist Intelligence Unit survey ranked Georgia’s democratic decline in 2024 as the fourth steepest globally. Did you ever expect that democratic decline in Georgia would happen so rapidly and dramatically?

Zourabichvili: Never, and I think that is a very big challenge for us. It’s more than a challenge, it’s tragic. But it’s also a very big challenge for the EU. If a country that had candidate status just a year ago can turn its back on the European bloc by halting the process of rapprochement and by passing all this legislation which goes against all the fundamental rights and principles upon which the EU was founded, and the EU does not react and does not have any means or will to react, then that should be very [concerning] for the EU itself. It is confronting a small country of 3.7mn inhabitants and this emerging European power can’t do anything about that? 

Georgia acts as a test for Russia’s strategy of hybrid warfare, but it’s also a test for Europe.

The EU has to review their decision-making process. You cannot have two countries which block decisions when the stakes are so high. They have to review their system because it’s very slow. We see now when organisations are left without any support after the freezing of USAID and the halting of EU support programmes for the Georgian budget … What is left if nobody can do anything? These are challenges for the future and may also concern other countries. What concerns Georgia always concerns the whole region – the Black Sea, Armenia, Azerbaijan. It’s not only Georgia.