I remember my childhood in Tbilisi very well, especially the winters: the cold, the darkness, the smell of burning tires and people huddling up to stay warm, and the waiting in line for hours.
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We had food stamps – for sugar, flour, and bread. When I got a little older, I also learned that certain people were allowed to drive under the influence and not bother with stopping at a red light. Anything was possible for a bribe.
Back then, Georgia was one of the most corrupt republics in the post-Soviet era. In 1994, my family packed their belongings and we moved to Russia.
In 2003, mass protests that later came to be known as the Rose Revolution broke out in Georgia, leading to the rise of a group of young pro-Western politicians. And so, without any bloodshed, Mikheil Saakashvili transformed the region, setting a precedent that would become Russian President Vladimir Putin's nightmare.
In the winter of 2006, I returned to Tbilisi and discovered a completely different city, a different country. The culture of bribery was no longer, and instead, Georgians engaged in business, earning, building, and initiating. Misha – that's how President Saakashvili was called – began to rebuild the country, leading his country the European way. Bribes were no longer needed to get things done and electricity, gas, and hot water became commonplace.
The greatest blow for Saakashvili was the Russian invasion in 2008. Those terrible days in August became a resounding warning of what Putin will do in 2022 in Ukraine. But at the time, the war and the Russian occupation of 20% of Georgia's territory did not make an impression on the world.
Georgia is too small and the war was too short, and Russia's resources – especially energy – were too vast. The West continued to do business as usual with Putin, while Saakashvili became the main public critic of the Kremlin in the Western corridors, and also predicted the invasion of Ukraine.
I worked at the president's press office at the time, and after the war worked many hours with Saakashvili. Georgia and its economic miracle, which Saakashvili almost achieved, were his obsession. One time, we had just returned from the Munich Security Conference. Saakashvili was in a bad mood and complained of a headache, then suddenly announced, "The pain is gone, we must have arrived home."
He shook his head, demanded to change the route, and instead of Tbilisi we landed in Batumi, where – despite the rain and the late hour – he ran around the construction sites in the city (while we, the journalists, were indignant and chasing after him). Waving his hands, he raced down the boulevard, firing questions at the contractors and telling them about some fantastic new fountain.
In 2012, four years after the invasion, Saakashvili unilaterally canceled the visa regime for Russians. He opened the doors to the citizens of the country that bombed him. Russia and Georgia were condemned to be neighbors, he said, why lose the opportunity to conduct business and host Russian tourists?
Besides the tourists, who received a bottle of wine when crossing the border, he also invited countless Russian liberals to Tbilisi, who on their return home wrote about "the Georgia that succeeded". Saakashvili is, without a doubt, a man of admirable power, but he is blinded by his plans. He forgot about the unemployed and the farmers, who earn dimes. In 2012 he lost but transferred the power to those victorious smoothly.
In recent years, Saakashvili worked in Ukraine, but even before the war, he returned to Tbilisi, aware of the cases being conducted against him. He returned – and was imprisoned. Since then he has been fading away, and it is hard to believe how this once all-powerful man became an emaciated and dying old man.
I don't know if his return is possible, but at the very least, we can make sure he lives. The problem is that the current government in Georgia – the "Georgian Dream" political party and oligarch and former Prime Minister of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili – consider everything Saakashvili did wrong, including the aspiration to be accepted into the European Union (even though, according to polls, 85% of Georgians are interested in this). Ivanishvili's regime refrains from imposing sanctions on Russia, detaines more and more political prisoners, and ignores Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's calls to show compassion toward Saakashvili.
The "Georgian Dream" firmly maintains the need to keep the visa waiver for Russia despite the wave of Russian men who escaped the conscription but increasingly refuses entry to independent Russian journalists and activists of the Russian Opposition. On the other hand, it is also likely that the Georgian leadership itself is in an unwise situation: they do not want to kill Saakashvili because of the consequences, but neither are they interested in releasing him.
Some will say that Saakashvili has lost, but I am convinced that in the long run, he will be victorious: the young people in Georgia are quite progressive and aware of the value of democracy, freedom, and human rights. Once the Putin regime collapses, the Ivanishvili regime will follow. But it won't happen tomorrow or the day after, and Saakashvili does not have the luxury of time.
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