Aletho News

Is the West Fanning Euromaidan-Style Public Protests in Georgia?

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 16.05.2024

The US, EU and NATO have slammed the newly-passed foreign agents law in Georgia, while the foreign ministers of Iceland, Lithuania and Estonia took part in protest rallies against the legislation in Tbilisi. Sputnik’s pundits called these actions foreign meddling in Georgia’s affairs.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis expressed support for the “European” aspirations of Georgian protesters at a protest rally in Tbilisi on May 15.

“In a democracy, the government owes it to you, the Georgian people, to follow the direction your moral compass is showing,” Landsbergis told the crowd. “I am speaking out because I am… on the side of a European Georgia.”

But Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, the secretary-general of the ruling Georgian Dream party, called their actions hostile and aimed at dividing Georgian society.

“This is not friendship, this is enmity, this is an attempt to deepen polarization in our country,” Kaladze told the Rustavi 2 TV channel. “Could you imagine our minister of foreign affairs going to Yerevan and speaking at an [Armenian] opposition rally?”

Direct Foreign Interference in Georgia’s Affairs

It was not the first time that Lithuanian officials have fanned public protests in a foreign state, according to Dr. Eduardas Vaitkus, Lithuanian politician who was an independent candidate in the 2024 Lithuanian presidential election.

“This is direct interference in the internal affairs of the sovereign state of Georgia,” Vaitkus told Sputnik.

Vaitkus cited earlier precedents for Lithuania’s meddling in the domestic affairs of Ukraine and Belarus. Vilnius has spent millions of euros supporting Belarusian self-declared opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, backed by the West, who advocates for a coup d’etat in Minsk.

He recalled that the Lithuanian foreign minister’s grandfather, then-European Parliament member Vytautas Landsbergis, was spotted during the 2013 Euromaidan events in Kiev calling for a wider revolt in Ukraine.

“Unfortunately, this is the position of the Lithuanian state. My opinion is that traitors in our state are leading Lithuania in a way that creates a threat to all residents of Lithuania,” Vaitkus said.

The politician condemned the Lithuanian government’s “double and triple standards” in its unwillingness to recognize the will of the Crimean people to reunite with Russia — while rushing to embrace the self-declared independence of Kosovo alongside the West.

“Politics must have moral values. And [the Lithuanian government] demonstrates that duplicity is its main imperative in foreign policy,” Vaitkus said.

Russian Senator Konstantin Dolgov believes that Vilnius’ political agenda is not independent, but is dictated from the West.

“What can you expect from Lithuania and Estonia? These are countries that have long lost their independence and have become ‘appendages’ of Washington and Brussels,” Dolgov said, arguing that foreign ministers Iceland, Lithuania and Estonia could be sent by their Western patrons to fan unrest in Georgia.

Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Dmitry Polyansky noted that the foreign ministers’ presence at Georgian protests is reminiscent of US and European politicians’ conduct during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan unrest in Kiev.

US Trying to Exert Pressure on Georgia as Its Hegemony Wanes

The US, EU and NATO have criticized the newly-passed foreign agents bill in Georgia, with US Assistant Secretary of State Jim O’Brien announcing on May 14 that Georgian MPs could be subjected to sanctions for “undermining democracy”.

While attacking the bill, which obliges Georgian media and NGOs to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive over 20 percent of their funding from abroad, US policy-makers avoid mentioning that the Georgian legislation is reminiscent of the US’ own Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

FARA requires individuals acting on behalf of foreign governments, organizations or persons foreign to the US to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and to disclose their relationship, activities, receipts, and disbursements in support of their activities.

Under to US law, such individuals are described as “foreign agents” while the FARA Unit of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES) is responsible for the Act’s enforcement.

The fierce US opposition to the Georgian bill under the guise of the “protection of democracy” and sanctions threats is an attempt to keep Tbilisi in line with the collective West’s agenda, according to Tiberio Graziani, chairman of Rome-based think tank Vision and Global Trends.

“The so-called defense of democracy, as promoted and implemented by the US-led West, falls within the context of the hybrid, cognitive and psychological war against those countries considered enemies, for geopolitical and geostrategic reasons,” Graziani told Sputnik.

“Any [country] that attempts to operate and act in the international context to responsibly promote the defense of its national interest is demonized by the US. Examples of this practice include, just to give a few examples, the so-called color revolutions,” he continued.

The US is believed to be behind a series of color revolutions in the former Soviet Union, including the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and the failed Jeans Revolution in Belarus in 2006.

According to the expert, the threat and use of sanctions against foreign politicians pursuing national sovereignty constitutes a form of long-term US hybrid warfare.

Now that the world is becoming multipolar, the US is feeling the loss of its role as hegemon and could act irrationally with dramatic consequences for the rest of the world population, Graziani warned.

May 16, 2024 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Estonia, European Union, Georgia, Iceland, Lithuania, NATO, United States | Leave a comment