Georgia, Appealing to Canada for Help

"We are straightforwardly moving towards Russia."

"They're arresting doctors, beating journalists, and threatening to close down the opposition media."

"I do remember the time when the Soviet Union was collapsing and they were dispersing demonstrators, but they never did anything like this. This is brutal."

"[And, because few countries recognize Georgian Dream's re-election as legitimate], there are no institutions that will follow their orders except the police and special forces."

"But they are using special forces against people. We have this generational trauma already. And this just adds to our trauma even more."

Maya Purtskhvanidze, activist, Georgian Women's Initiative Group 

"The criminal acts of inhuman and degrading treatment and targeted persecution of peaceful protesters, as depicted in the video footage distributed by the media are disturbing."

"The video footage and information released clearly reveal numerous episodes of unjustified use of special equipment against protesters, including politicians as well as journalists and detainees, cases of alleged unjustified detention, direct intent to commit violence, and targeted persecution during the dispersal of the peaceful protest."

Public Defender of Georgia statement

 

"By suspending Georgia's EU accession process, Georgian Dream has rejected the opportunity for closer ties with Europe and made Georgia more vulnerable to the Kremlin."

"It's a textbook Russian way of destabilizing civil society and establishing dictatorship and the regime of the country."

"First, they attack international organizations, watchdog organizations, political parties, and human rights defenders."

"All the boxes are checked right now."

U.S. State Department

Pro-European Union demonstrators hold Georgian and EU flags during a protest against the government's postponement of European Union accession talks until 2028, outside the Parliament in central Tbilisi, Georgia, Dec. 11, 2024. Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto/Getty

Violent protests of Georgian citizens against vote-rigging in their recent election, allied with the decision by the leading governing party, Georgian Dream, to abandon the country's talks of joining the European Union, seem like a reprise of a similar situation a decade earlier in Ukraine. The reversal is that Ukraine wanted to join the EU, and to create a separation between itself and Russia, and in Georgia the ruling party is moving closer to Russia, abandoning the country's aspiration to join the European Union.

Weeks of protests in the country of 3.7 million people has seen Tbilisi punished by an increasingly authoritarian government re-installed by the election on October 26 in parliamentary elections ostensibly favouring Georgian Dream. Voter intimidation, vote-buying allegations and associated voting irregularities were reported by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

Georgian Dream, in its 12th year in government, announced a day following the election its intention to halt accession talks with the EU until some time in 2028. This, despite its constitution which promises to pursue full integration into the European and NATO. The European Parliament had issued a resolution critical of the election it characterized as unfair. The EU suspension announcement saw a wave of protests and a violent response in the past several days where tear gas, water cannons and police beatings broke up the protests.

In recent weeks, a constitutional institution independent from government, the Public Defender of Georgia, spoke with 327 detainees who were injured during the protests. Of that total, 225 protesters spoke of ill-treatment suffered from the police, with 157 of that number having visible injuries. "I don't know why the government thought they had to use force", said Moreta Bobokhidze, a Georgia activist.

 

Protests over delays in the country's European Union negotiations have stretched into their 14th consecutive day, as demonstrators demand swift action from the government to advance membership talks, in Tbilisi, Georgia, Dec. 11, 2024. Davit Kachkachishvili/Anadolu/Getty

 

A 28-year-old film and theatre actor, Andre Chichinadze, was arrested when 6 police officers appeared at his house. He was arrested on charges of organizing, leading, participating and publicly calling for violence. His mother explained: "He was just standing in the front line, right in front of the police or the mob, because there were girls he was trying to protect." The government's intention to suppress peaceful protest, intimidate the public and "target positive faces" is part of its plan to subdue protest.

"They could have arrested him during the demonstration, but no. They specifically organized this home arrest and created this propaganda around him as if they were investigating something."

"For so many years, people were patient, or trying to be patient, because they didn't want to fight on the street, they didn't want to demonstrate."

"They wanted peaceful development."

Maya Purtskhvanidze

The public is fearful that suspension of EU accession talks would result in an increasingly vulnerable Georgia, ripe for Russian interference. In desperation, activists in Georgia have called on the Canadian government to "publicly condemn backsliding in Georgia, support targeted sanctions on officials responsible for undermining Georgia's democratic integrity, advocate for peaceful protests and bolster Canadian support for Georgia's Euro-Atlantic integration".

"Canada remains open to co-operation with Georgia, as long as the Georgian leadership respects democracy, human rights, rule of law and addresses the recent democratic backsliding."

"We call for calm by all parties and for the Georgian authorities to respect the rights and security of individuals in the context of peaceful protests."\

"[There is a need for] free, fair and independent elections [in democratic societies]."

Canadian government statement

Canada itself is undergoing a situation not entirely dissimilar to Georgia's. The current Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is dysfunctional and has led the country into financial ruin, exacerbated relations between its disparate provinces, mismanaged immigrant intake so that housing, medical care, social services are well beyond breaking point. Rising crime, religious, ethnic turmoil has taken over the streets, while the governing body does nothing to put a stop to the chaos and violence. Hardly the country to turn to for help in Georgia's travails.

Georgia fears the smothering tentacles of  the Russian Federation with designs to once again incorporate Georgia into a greater union with Russia to fulfill Russian President Vladimir Putin's wish to emulate the Soviet Union's control of its eastern European neighbours. Canada, on the other hand, is concerned and restive over a change in the Presidency in Washington that will impact, they fear, deleteriously on Canada's trade and independence. 

 

Perhaps Canada should call on Georgia to condemn the Canadian Prime Minister's refusal to step down from high executive office in favour of alternative governance to return Canada to its center of gravity as a law-abiding, secure and equality-ensuring nation. The vast majority of the Canadian voting public has no trust in this government led by a man whose vision is that of a 'post-National' country whose values, laws, culture and history is to be erased.

Pro-Palestine supporters at a Hands Off Rafah rally in Edmonton, Alberta, on March 10, 2024. (Artur Widak via Getty Images)

"We want to be expanding our co-operation with partners who support Moldova ... that includes the European Union [and] NATO."

"Every week there is something new, there's a new negative effect of this war on us."

"Last week ... almost 80 - 90 percent of the country was plunged into darkness for most of a day. This is a really, totally unacceptable, very aggressive Russian campaign that targets Ukraine but also in complete disregard of our security."\

"Neutrality does not mean demilitarization. We need the military means and all the other means to defend our country, to defend our peace, to defend our people from aggression."

Nicu Popescu, Moldavian foreign minister

 

"If there is one lesson learned from Ukraine, it's that we need to support them now ... when we have seen developments going to the absolutely wrong direction as we saw with the invasion of Ukraine."

"[Bosnia -- long wracked by political instability, Russian interference and ethnic tensions -- is] important for stability in the whole of the Western Balkans."

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg

Russia is now using nuclear-capable missiles with non-explosive warheads to exhaust Ukraine's air defences, the Ukrainian military has said.  Reuters

Russia's 'special military invasion' of Ukraine had a purpose; to convince Ukraine and other eastern European nations once part of the Soviet Empire, that the Russian Federation would be extremely displeased were they to pursue their vision of joining NATO. NATO's close alliance with those countries is a matter of great consternation to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin; its constant reach into Russia's 'near abroad' has driven Moscow to paranoia. 

Now, Russian aggression in its attitude toward its former reluctant allies, its internal interference in Georgia and now Ukraine's experience with Russian barbarism has convinced many of the nations in eastern Europe formerly not quite certain their place should be in NATO, to formally request that they be considered for membership. In battering Ukraine and posing a sequential threat to its neighbours Russia has succeeded in persuading them not to shy clear of NATO, but to strenuously ally themselves with NATO through membership beyond mere casual alliance.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba during the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Bucharest, Romania, Nov. 30, 2022.

 

Moldova, as a neighbour of Ukraine, has been hard hit by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, across Moldova's border. NATO is prepared to offer fresh support to three nations which Moscow's ten-month-old war in Ukraine has imposed repercussions upon, slopping over to cross beyond their borders. NATO met this week and hosted foreign ministers from Moldova, Georgia and Bosnia. The discussion with the foreign ministers of the NATO countries revolved around how the huge security organization could assist the three nations impacted by Russia's invasion. Concerns revolving around energy and territorial uncertainty precipitated by the war were under discussion.

According to Jens Stoltenberg, the allies discussed shared security concerns with the three countries -- Moldova, Georgia and Bosnia -- facing the pressure of Russian dominance. The end result was that alliance members generally agreed they would assist in training and improving the security and defence institutions of the three nations. Moldova is facing a severe energy crisis as a result of its reliance on Russian energy. It has recently suffered massive power outages due to Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy grid.

And then there is the matter of Russian missiles having traversed Moldova's air space, along with the debris of missiles landing on Moldovian soil. Blasts occurred in the country's Russian-backed region of Transnistria in April, where around 1,500 Russian troops are based. In June, Moldova was granted EU candidate status, the very day that Ukraine too was given candidate status in the EU.   

 

"[Bosnia, where a government is in the process of being formed following the elections], is very concerned about the future."   

"We have proxies, or we had the proxies, in our government, Russian proxies. So division in the country is deep and we hope that we will be able to overcome it. NATO’s presence is extremely important for Bosnia-Herzegovina because it is a guarantor of our security." 

Bosnian Foreign Minister Bsera Turkovic

 

Russian Defense Ministry officials show off the Russia's 9M729 cruise missile at the military Patriot Park outside Moscow   AFP

Black And Dead : Vigilantism Lives

"[The three men had] no badge, no uniform, no authority [and were] just some strange guys in a white pickup truck."

"You can't make a citizen's arrest because someone's running down the street and you have no idea what they did wrong."

"Standard stuff: malign the victim, it's the victim's fault. You can't claim self-defense if you are the unjustified aggressor. Who started this? It wasn't Ahmaud Arbery."

“I was hopeful based on the evidence that we presented in the case that we put forth that the jury would see the truth of what actually took place and bring justice for the Arbery family. After we picked the jury, we looked at them and realized that we had very, very smart, very intelligent, honest jurors who were going to do their job which is to seek the truth."

"And so, we felt that putting up our case, it doesn't matter whether they were black or white, that putting up our case that this jury would hear the truth, they would see the evidence and that they would do the right thing and come back with the correct verdict which we felt they did today."

Cobb County Lead prosecutor Linda Dunikoski 

Arbery's case put a spotlight on racial injustice against African Americans

"Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers will be held accountable, but a historic civil rights mobilization was necessary for the killers to face prosecution at all. There was nearly impunity for this murder, and further investigation is necessary to determine how and why officials initially refused to pursue the case."

"The circumstances of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder and the struggle required to secure a prosecution demonstrate profoundly the urgency of reforms to make equal justice real in America.”

Sen. Jon Ossoff, of Georgia

He was 25 years old, a young Black man who enjoyed jogging. For whatever reason on February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery happened to be in a white neighbourhood, jogging in the suburban community of Satilla Shores, in Brunswick, Georgia. As it happened on that night, 65-year-old Gregory McMichael watched the black man running down their street. His son Travis, 35, joined his father as he made a 911 emergency call to inform an operator "there's a Black male running down the street". 

 

An untoward episode of black-and-white that propelled the two men and their neighbour, William Bryan, 52, into action.

 

Father and son reached for shotguns. This was no jogger, they convinced one another, this was someone who had invaded their neighbourhood, committed a crime and was now running away. They got into their pickup truck and sped after the jogger. The chase went on for an estimated five minutes through looping streets. The victim, Ahmaud Arbery, was not available this week to testify how terrified he was at being followed by three white men trying to corner him in the darkening streets of an unfamiliar neighbourhood.

But the jury at the three men's trial, viewing a graphic cellphone video that Bryan McMichaels happened to shoot as his son pumped three bullets into the captured black man's chest left nothing to the imagination. That Sunday afternoon jog didn't turn out as Ahmaud Arbery assumed it would; a refreshing run to cap off a good day. That Sunday was not a good day for anyone. But justice took its time. None of the three was immediately taken into custody. Until the video surfaced and the public howled.

At a trial that took two weeks in coastal Brunswick city, the case revolved around whether the three defendants were right to confront the unarmed jogger, based on the supposition he was running away after having committed a crime. The neighbourhood, the defence stressed, had suffered a number of break-ins. They argued on behalf of their clients that there was justification for the shooting after Mr. Arbery ran past the McMichaels' driveway. The defence of property trumping a human life.

The jury was comprised of eleven white men and women, and one Black man. They listened to the prosecution and the defence, asked to hear the 911 call again and to view that damning video and two days later delivered their verdict. All three convicted of murder for chasing and shooting Ahmaud Arbery; rejecting the self-defence claim. The three were charged with murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal intent to commit a felony.

To teach an uppity Black man who imagined himself a proud American citizen, free to exercise his limbs on a public street, a lesson he might never forget to ensure his error would never be repeated. In the process making certain the man would never run again, never have the opportunity to irritate and inflame the minds of whites who view Blacks as looters and criminals, they proved themselves to be  killers and will pay the price.

 

Life in prison, perhaps with the possibility of parole.

It took two months before action was taken to apprehend the three after the cellphone video came to public notice. There is another trial scheduled for the three men who see a looter every time they see a Black face. A federal trial next year, on hate-crime charges.

 

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The Tsar of the Chessboard

"Russia plans to establish a military base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast to serve as a logistics center for the Russian navy, according to a draft agreement between Moscow and Khartoum signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and released publicly Nov. 11."

"The agreement states that Sudan will provide a land plot for the Russian base free of charge for a period of 25 years. It will automatically renew for subsequent 10-year periods. To terminate the deal, one of the parties must notify the other party of its intention at least one year before the expiration of the next period."

"While the base’s capacity will be capped at four ships at a time, nuclear-powered ships are permitted to dock, thus significantly increasing the combat capability of the Russian navy in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The number of military personnel permanently staying at this facility should not exceed 300 people, according to the agreement. Also, Russia will have the right to import and export through the seaports and airfields of Sudan 'any weapons, ammunition and equipment' necessary for the operation of the base and 'for the performance of tasks by warships'. Sudan, according to the published document outlining the agreement, will not collect import and export duties and taxes."

Kiril Semenov, Al-Monitor

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin inspects the Arktika nuclear-powered icebreaker at the port of Murmansk, northwestern Russia, Oct. 21, 2020. (Photo by Alexander ASTAFYEV / SPUTNIK / AFP)

Moscow also succeeded in persuading Syria's president Bashar al-Assad in exchange for Russian air power enabling the Alawite administration to put down a rebellion by its Syrian Sunni population, to agree to a Russian naval facility in Tartus as a leased military installation of the Russian Navy located on the northern edge of the sea port of the Syrian city of Tartus, its deep-sea base in the Mediterranean. And then there is the little matter of seizing Ukraine's Crimea naval base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Spreading itself around, in Vladimir Putin's ambitions to restore elements of Russia's lost status as a regional and world power.

Mr. Putin has been a busy man, negotiating deals, and when negotiations are inconvenient, simply stepping in, marshalling Russian military might and imposing itself where it believes it belongs, in a position of authority and manipulative power. No one could ever accuse Vladimir Putin of not intimately knowing the very best chess moves. Of course there are also clumsy and not-too-intelligent, visceral moves to rid himself of 'enemies' of his aspirational rise for Russia to more closely resemble the Soviet model.

Poisoning critics is one of them, whether they take place in London or in Russia itself. More effective has been the incidental and mysterious killing by snipers of intrusive reporters and pestiferous political opponents. There have been incursions in Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus, in Nagorno-Karabakh of such an open extent that Russia's neighbours in its near-abroad have shrunk back in fear of once again being forced into Russia's tentacle-orbit. NATO has done its best to allay such fears, but Mr. Putin is still smiling.

For years, Russia has been accused of attacking hospitals and clinics as part of a strategy to help President Bashar al-Assad of Syria secure victory in the civil war.   Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

His expansion and military presence in Syria, Libya and even in the Arctic have been gratifyingly useful. And should U.S.President Trump proceed with his intention to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, Mr. Putin will feel free to once again pop up there, too. This time perhaps not as an occupying force where an ignominious departure has left deep scars in the Russian psyche, but as a friend to the Taliban who are certain to reclaim the country once again.

Belarusians are once again becoming intimately acquainted with their neighbour whose troops moved in conveniently to prop up its choice of dictatorship, a ploy that failed to proceed as anticipated in Ukraine, where the standoff between the government of Ukraine and Russia's proxy ethnic Russian 'Ukrainian' loyalists defy Ukrainian sovereignty. Russia has to date escaped responsibility for the downing and murder of passengers aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 when it was downed by a Buk missile, leaving all 283 passengers and 15 crew dead.

 

"Putin appears to have achieved a significant victory in Nagorno-Karabakh that threatens to alter the geopolitical balance throughout the former Soviet space in his favour."

"He has succeeded in expanding Russia's military presence in the strategically important region ... without encountering any Western pushback."

Anders Aslund, former economic adviser to Russia, Ukraine, Sweden, member of the Atlantic Council

In the Republic of Moldova, an election pits a democratic, pro-European Union candidate for president against a pro-Russian incumbent backed by Russia. Moldova too lost part of its territory, the region of Transnisria in 1992 to Russia. Similar to Russian troops occupying South Ossetia in Georgia, since 2008. Vladimir Putin is having a good time with his geographical chess game, and there's no one to interfere with his grandiloquent plans as the new czar.

 

Nabad al Hayat Surgical Hospital in southern Idlib Province served around 200,000 people before being destroyed in a Russian airstrike on May 5. In a Russian Air Force transmission obtained by The Times, a pilot can be heard receiving the hospital’s exact coordinates before bombing it.  Credit...Orient News

"The argument by the Russians or the regime is always that hospitals are run by terrorists."

"Is it really possible that all the people are terrorists?"

"The truth is that after hospitals are hit, and in areas like this where there is just one hospital, our houses have become hospitals."

Nabad al Hayat’s head nurse, who asked to remain anonymous because he feared being targeted

Russia, Distinguishing Itself

"Geopolitics still exists in the 21st century ... Unless you are in NATO, Moscow is near and Washington, D.C., is far away."
"Barefaced lying in the great chamber of the UN Security Council is simple if your opponent does not have concrete proof of your actions, and more importantly, doesn't want concrete proof, in case he or she has to do do something about it."
Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography

There is the geostrategic value to Vladimir Putin of having a deep-water port in the Mediterranean and there is in addition the value to Russia of having been able to re-establish influence in the Middle East. Though his alliance with Syria's Bashar al-Assad in destroying the Sunni Syrian rebellion against Assad's Baathist Alawite rule, in yet another sectarian conflict with the minority Shiite regime governing a Sunni-majority population is no guarantee of stability once the geography is restored in its entirety with the forced expulsion of ISIL, to Assad.

An Su-24 taking off from Hmeimim air base in 2015.

Russian Ministry of Defense

It does, however, in humane terms, stink to high heaven that Putin has aligned himself with a mass murderer and has defended the Syrian regime against irrefutable charges of chemical weapons attacks against vulnerable civilians. But then, Russian warplanes have also engaged in bombing hospitals and schools and apartment buildings in rebel-held parts of Damascus. There is also a kind of social-cultural connection between Russians and Arabs of the Middle East. Both respect force and power. Neither are given to compromise and reasonable accommodation.

Compromise and reasonable accommodation is for losers. They fail to recognize that civilizational mores call out for compromise. To them it represents a failing, an avoidance of hard choices. The West tends to think in terms of sparing human life in contrast to the East which veers toward the sentiment that if sacrifices are to be made for the greater good, it will not be they who make them but their adversaries. This is the logic of tribalism. And it is basically the reason why the Middle East is in perpetual turmoil.

It is also the reason why Russia and Syria are supported by Iran and Iraq and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah, the proxy terrorist group devoted to Iranian Shia-ism; sectarian religious devotion to one's own and the compulsion to further that strain of Islam seen as heretical by the vastly dominant Sunni strain. And although Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, non-Arab like Iran, but fundamentally Sunni, and averse to Bashar, is included in that abhorrent company is because he too is a tyrant of violent and impulsive drive.

Russia's penchant for bullying its eastern Europe and Asian co-geographic neighbours has a long tradition, not one honoured by neighbours who were forced to become satellites in greater Russia's dream of firmly loyal hegemony that collapsed under the weight of its Communist dysfunction, but it's still trying. In its zeal to support ethnic Russian Ukrainians revolting against Ukraine, it supplied the rebels with powerful weapons but will never acknowledge its responsibility for the shooting down of the Malaysian Airliner flying over Ukraine in 2014.

Hard to get a real feel which is the worst atrocity, the death of those 298 passengers and crew in their overflight of the conflict area of Flight MH17, or Georgia's loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Ukraine's loss of Sevastopol and the Crimean Peninsula. Either way, the Kremlin and Putin defied international geopolitical laws and appears entirely indifferent to the criticism and sanctions imposed other than to express frustration and outrage that Russia's internal politics are being interfered with by outside sources.

"Russia found itself in a position it could not retreat from [protecting Russia's Black Sea port]."
"If you compress the spring all the way to its limits, it will snap back."
Russian President Vladimir Putin

Just as Putin has defended the Syrian regime by denying that chlorine gas and sarin have ever been used to destroy the lives of Syrian Sunni civilians, so too does he vehemently deny that Russia has ever embarked on a surreptitious campaign of killing Russian 'traitors' to his regime, where they live in exile abroad. So he has accused the U.K. of themselves producing that military-grade chemical poison and clumsily using as an attempted assassination of the Skripals in Salisbury.

Officers in protective suits prepare to secure the police forensic tent that covers the bench where Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found unconscious in Salisbury, England. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)