“Putin’s Russia knows how to wage psychological and propaganda warfare,” warns the President of Georgia

Paris Match. A new president was elected yesterday in Parliament. You said you would stay at the Presidential Palace after your term ends on December 29. What will happen?

Salome Zourabichvili. First, it was not a new president who was elected. We are in an abnormal situation, in that the legislative elections were fraudulent. The Parliament that emerged from it is not legitimate. Not only is it not legitimate, but it has since taken a certain number of decisions which themselves go against the Constitution. For example, he convened sessions without waiting for the Constitutional Court to rule on the requests made to it. All this is a succession of “exits” from the Constitution. The election of the new president does not change anything as it was a great parody. Yesterday there was only one party represented in Parliament, only one name, and they read the only name on the paper as if there was a choice to be made. We are in an Orwellian situation.

The rest after this ad

Are you going to barricade yourself in the Palace after the 29th?

Everyone asks me if I'm going to stay in this Palace or not! Actually, I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet and it doesn't matter much. What is important is that I carry the legitimacy of the election by universal suffrage, and that I am president as long as a new president has not been duly elected. The Constitution says so. So, I am waiting for the new elections, which will take place because it is the general and massive demand of the population. This is the only solution to the crisis and as soon as the new elections have taken place, they will allow, through the new Parliament, the election of a new President to whom I will very willingly give up my place.

I, as president, have no power. I'm not even a counter-power. I can't do anything.

You made an appearance yesterday in front of Parliament. Thousands of demonstrators chanted your first name. This movement is leaderless, but takes you to the pinnacle.

It's a very big responsibility. This is what is very important and that is why I will continue. This movement is in fact headless, without a leader, and this is its strength since those in power do not know how to take it. Faced with an illegitimate Parliament and president, we still need someone who embodies the continuity of the State, legitimacy. I, as president, have no power. I'm not even a counter-power. I can't do anything. I only have the power of speech and the responsibility of this trust given to me by the population to embody this stability and this continuity, which is very important at this moment.

No strikes in the country, mostly peaceful demonstrators, is it possible that this movement will turn into a revolution? Is this desirable?

I think this is not desirable, nor does it correspond to the character of the country. Georgia is a small country that has already experienced everything imaginable over the last century, and which knows how to preserve itself. This is why its population is very peaceful and cautious. She knows very well how to thwart provocations which have not been lacking. Just yesterday, the authorities organized a big provocation by bringing children from the Georgian Dream party to the place and time of the demonstrations, under the pretext of lighting a tree which is usually lit here on the day of the saint. Barbara, December 17. But these young people are extremely aware of the fact that they must not touch the stability of the country, because we are in a region, in a neighborhood that we know very well. For this reason, everyone is pushing for one thing: new elections. Nobody is talking about overthrowing power. Let's have new elections and let everyone receive the votes they truly deserve. No one thinks that the Georgian Dream has no supporters. They certainly have votes, but not as many as they stole in the last election. And when a majority of the population does not have the impression that their voice has been taken into account, we find ourselves faced with this situation of general paralysis.

And the absence of a strike?

There is no strike, but there are work stoppages. The strike is very difficult in a country where most jobs are public, therefore largely held by the single party, which has just adopted a law which allows them to throw people out without any pretext whereas previously we had a law very protective of public service introduced precisely after long work with Europeans. It fell apart two days ago. There are no more limits. Today, another law is being introduced, which should make it possible to arrest people not with a charge, a guilt, but because it is presumed that they could be led to do something.

In Georgia, but also in Romania and Moldova, Russia is pulling out all the stops to destabilize its former satellites. Are Europeans aware of this? What is at stake here, for Georgia, but also for Europe? What are we risking?

We risk a new strategy of expansion of Russia by a means much less costly than the war in Ukraine which did not succeed. This war will end, or not, in the coming months, in any case, it is already a great failure for Russia, which has used up all its resources. We see the North Koreans arriving, we see what it can no longer do in Syria. Here we have to face an alternative strategy which is intervention through elections. I am surprised that there are still people in Europe who say to us: “but do you have proof of the violation of the elections?” We don't have proof, we have tons of proof! But there is still a need for proof when we see what happened in Romania, which is undergoing yet another equally dangerous scenario, when we see that Moldova was saved by its diaspora while our diaspora was not authorized to vote, otherwise the results would have been very different here too… It is very clear that Russia uses hybrid means everywhere, its propaganda, which we also see at work in European countries, and not only in the space formerly Soviet. Tomorrow there will be elections in Germany, and Russia is developing very sophisticated instruments of destabilization. If there is one thing that Putin's Russia knows how to do, who, we must never forget, is a former agent of the KGB, or the FSB, it is as much the war waged in Ukraine as the war that he is now waging a psychological war among us, a war of services, a war of propaganda. It is time for Europeans to understand. It is time to move very quickly when it comes to not recognizing violated elections and stop the hesitations. If sanctions can be taken, let them be, if it is not possible, then let us stop promising and instead put in place a much more pro-active policy to support civil society in when it is useful. Today, we have two of the three opposition leaders who are threatened in Georgia. We have the entry into force of the “Russian” law on foreign agents, which will gradually muzzle NGOs, as was the case in Russia. We are really witnessing the passage under the domination of a Russian regime based on a single party which controls all the institutions, which no longer has a civil society in front of it. That's what's at stake. It is time for Europeans to face reality.

Concretely, what are you asking of Europe?

Lucidity. The non-recognition of these elections. The end of “business as usual”. The rest we do ourselves. No one here has any illusions that we won't be saved by Europe or anyone else. We will be saved by these young people in the street who have no intention of stopping. But these young people must know that what is happening here is seen and understood. Let her know that she is fighting for herself, but also for others, because the lessons of what is happening in Georgia must be learned for the rest of the free world, for Europe, for the rest of this community to which we intend to belong, come what may.