Georgian Democracy Collapse: Russia, China, & Iran See Opening as West Retreats

The col­lapse of democ­ra­cy in Geor­gia has cre­at­ed a strate­gic open­ing for Rus­sia, Chi­na, and Iran as the small Cau­ca­sus nation aban­dons its West­ern ori­en­ta­tion under the author­i­tar­i­an rule of bil­lion­aire Bidz­i­na Ivan­ishvil­i’s Geor­gian Dream par­ty. On 16 July 2025, CNN report­ed that the coun­try once con­sid­ered a post-Sovi­et demo­c­ra­t­ic suc­cess sto­ry now faces US sanc­tions against its shad­ow ruler, with almost all oppo­si­tion lead­ers jailed and pro­test­ers sub­ject­ed to vio­lent crack­downs amid grow­ing Chi­nese sur­veil­lance and Iran­ian eco­nom­ic ties. The arti­cle begins:

A decade ago, Geor­gia was the poster child of post-Sovi­et coun­tries on their way to democ­ra­cy and free­dom. The gov­ern­ment was tak­ing steps to fight cor­rup­tion. Civ­il soci­ety was blos­som­ing. The econ­o­my was grow­ing. Amer­i­can busi­ness­es were invest­ing. In 2004, even though it was not a mem­ber of NATO, Geor­gia sent its sol­diers to Afghanistan to join the Unit­ed States and oth­er mem­bers of the Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force (ISAF), becom­ing the largest non-NATO con­trib­u­tor to the oper­a­tion. In 2005, US Pres­i­dent George W. Bush vis­it­ed the cap­i­tal, Tbil­isi, and the high­way lead­ing to the air­port was renamed “George W. Bush Street.” That street sign is still there, but today, democ­ra­cy in Geor­gia, a small but strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed nation of 3.7 mil­lion peo­ple, is col­laps­ing. On Capi­tol Hill, in a bipar­ti­san effort, Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats are push­ing for pas­sage of the Mego­b­ari Act.

          Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/16/europe/georgia-protests-russia-china-iran-influence-intl-cmd

Georgia & Foreign Influence: Russian Operations Reshape Democracy

Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions in Geor­gia have achieved unprece­dent­ed suc­cess through a coor­di­nat­ed cam­paign that com­bines elec­toral inter­fer­ence, leg­isla­tive manip­u­la­tion, and sys­tem­at­ic dis­man­tling of demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, cul­mi­nat­ing in what US intel­li­gence ana­lysts describe as soft annex­a­tion through polit­i­cal means fol­low­ing the Geor­gian Dream par­ty’s con­tro­ver­sial Octo­ber 2024 elec­toral vic­to­ry. The rul­ing par­ty has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly adopt­ed Krem­lin-style tac­tics, includ­ing covert attacks on West­ern diplo­mats through coor­di­nat­ed social media cam­paigns and web­sites designed to silence crit­i­cism of the gov­ern­men­t’s increas­ing­ly author­i­tar­i­an poli­cies, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly imple­ment­ing a for­eign agents law that mir­rors Russ­ian leg­is­la­tion used to sup­press civ­il soci­ety organizations.

Moscow’s strat­e­gy extends beyond tra­di­tion­al pro­pa­gan­da to encom­pass sophis­ti­cat­ed elec­tion inter­fer­ence tac­tics, fab­ri­cat­ed audio record­ings designed to intim­i­date inter­na­tion­al observers, and eco­nom­ic lever­age through ener­gy depen­den­cies, with the suc­cess of these oper­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing a sig­nif­i­cant geopo­lit­i­cal shift as Euro­pean Par­lia­ment law­mak­ers con­demned the coun­try’s rule of law back­slid­ing and ques­tioned the legit­i­ma­cy of Geor­gia’s cur­rent gov­ern­ment amid ongo­ing mass protests and sys­tem­at­ic crack­downs on pro-EU oppo­si­tion forces.

Exter­nal References:

1. What Geor­gia’s For­eign Agent Law Means for Its Democracy

2. Geor­gia par­lia­ment over­turns veto on for­eign agents law

3. Geor­gia: UN experts con­demn adop­tion of Law on Trans­paren­cy of For­eign Influence

Key Points

• The US imposed sanc­tions on Geor­gian Dream founder Bidz­i­na Ivan­ishvili in Decem­ber, while about 60 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers lan­guish in jail accord­ing to human rights groups
• Chi­na’s influ­ence grows through the Anaklia deep-sea port con­tract giv­en to Chi­nese state-affil­i­at­ed com­pa­nies, while Geor­gian Dream installs Chi­nese-made facial recog­ni­tion cameras
• Geor­gia strength­ens Iran ties with Prime Min­is­ter Kobakhidze attend­ing Pres­i­dent Raisi’s funer­al along­side Hamas and Hezbol­lah lead­ers, plus grow­ing trade in Iran­ian oil
• The bipar­ti­san Mego­b­ari Act in US Con­gress would impose sanc­tions on Geor­gian offi­cials for elec­tion fraud and polit­i­cal repres­sion, hav­ing passed the House

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.