Giorgi Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
For more than a quarter of a century, the disclosure of "agents of Moscow" in the corridors of power, primarily in the government, has been the favorite business of Georgian politicians, journalists and representatives of the "expert community". All reflections about it are reduced to the topic of who is considered to be an "agent of Moscow" and who as an "agent of the Kremlin". Such an atmosphere does not contribute to the creation of normal conditions for the development of relations with neighboring states, even in cases when the benefits of cooperation in certain specific areas are obvious. The allegations of pro-Russian behavior or even of selling out the interests of the motherland are constantly hanging like a "sword of Damocles" over the authorities.
The founder of the ruling 'Georgian Dream' coalition, the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, at the beginning of his political activity was faced with this problem and announced the sale of his Russian assets to avoid the charges. He did not publicise the details, of course, but it is known that the former owner of the 'Russian Credit' bank and many other successful businesses in Russia has really sold everything except for his stake in Gazprom (1%, according to some data), gaining a total of about 2 billion dollars.
However, he did not escape the standard charges. Ex-president Saakashvili and his supporters immediately "caught" the billionaire that he "conspired with President Putin, who allowed him to sell the assets to invest that money in changing the pro-Western vector of Georgia."
The scheme is rather complicated, but given the years-long tradition, it is still for sale and considered popular, if not in society, then at least in the political class of the country.
And if Ivanishvili hadn't sold his Russian assets, the same people would accuse him of dependence on the Kremlin. So there were no good moves here, but Bidzina Ivanishvili, who, despite all his eccentricity, is undoubtedly an intelligent man, chose the lesser of two evils.
On the other hand, he was able to create an unprecedented mechanism of interaction between Georgia and Russia in the absence of diplomatic relations. This mechanism is called 'the Karasin-Abashidze negotiations format'. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin and the special representative of the Georgian Prime Minister, Zurab Abashidze, meet in Prague periodically and on the basis of this format Georgia has managed to solve a number of important issues: to return its agricultural products, wine and Borjomi to the Russian market, to resume regular flights, as well as to release several citizens arrested on charges of espionage in 2008 from Russian prisons.
Thus, Ivanishvili, who clearly was afraid of allegations of pro-Russian behavior, has created a precedent and a specific format of pragmatic cooperation with Russia on specific topics, without touching on the turbulent Caucasus emotions, which are always inherent in Georgia's relations with its northern neighbor.
Can we consider the formation of such a mechanism as a manifestation of pro-Russian behavior? Conventionally, yes, if we recognize that pragmatism and pro-Russian orientation are synonyms for Georgia. But such identification is too uncomfortable for the pro-Western forces, so they criticized the 'Karasin-Abashidze negotiations format' less. And this despite the fact that Bidzina Ivanishvili did not initiate the restoration of diplomatic relations with Moscow, he did not abandon the policy of joining NATO and the EU. Moreover, his Georgian Dream coalition has made the signing of the historic agreement "On the association with the EU" real.
The second candidate for the role of the pro-Russian politician in the Georgian government is, of course, the Deputy Prime Minister of Energy, former defender for Milan FC Kakhi Kaladze. They began to suspect him after he suddenly said that the majority of Kyiv residents do not support another revolution, commenting on the Ukrainian Maidan. Kaladze has lived in Kiev, playing for Dynamo Kyiv, he has a lot of friends in Ukraine. That is, the Deputy Prime Minister knew about whom and what he spoke, but this statement caused such a storm that since then Kakhi Kaladze has chosen his words carefully when speaking of any joint projects with Russia. However, he does not even talk about it, not even a word, for example, about the sale of a strategic gas pipeline passing through Georgia to Gazprom. But even Mikheil Saakashvili permitted the possibility of such a transaction, despite his intransigence towards Moscow.
Bidzina Ivanishvili formally is no longer head of the government: the Cabinet is headed by Irakli Garibashvili, who was the best and most successful manager in the vast empire of the billionaire in the recent past. But Georgian politicians periodically talk about the same old thing, about the pro-Russian behavior of Ivanishvili and Kakhi Kaladze, fearing that 'proverbial pragmatism' might lead to more large-scale projects of development of bilateral relations in the end.
