VERSANT

Politics
community for the Georgian cause, and we are not going to allow
Russia to provoke us into another war.” Upon being pressed to respond
to critics who claim she (and others in the administration) have a pro-
Russian policy, Khidasheli countered by saying “I’m not responsible for
every craziness that I hear. There is no human being in this country
you will find (and you can go out in the street and ask my name) who
will say [that our policy is pro-Russian].”
All of the Georgian officials that we spoke to seemed to be pushing
the line that it was dangerous to provoke Russia by reacting to its latest
moves, but not everybody in Georgia sees things that way. We’ve
come to the National Movement headquarters. They are the avowedly
anti-Russian party, which is now in opposition. “The Georgian Defense
Minister represents the fraction of their coalition who is rhetorically
the most pro-western, so they play a fig leaf role in that,” says Giga
Bokeria, Foreign Secretary of the United National Movement. “We
welcome the NATO training facility. After the Russian invasion in
Ukraine and after there is [now] finally an awakening to Putin’s challenge
there were certain steps made by the European Alliance and
generally the west, and one of its steps with respect to Georgia was
this [NATO] center, which is good but not sufficient. But you cannot
have a concept in which your goal is to say “we are just doing nothing
and we are good guys, and our western friends will tell us ‘well
good, you are not creating another headache for us’”. Repeating every
day, day in and day out “Russia will crush you, Russia will crush you”
makes no point, we all know that this is a danger and that Georgia will
Khurvaleti IDP camp, stuck between Russian-occupied Ossetia
and Georgia’s main highway. Above: two of the camp’s residents.