Georgia and Ukraine are different

A key factor in popular uprisings against pro-Russian regimes in Eurasia has been, at times, the controversial role of nationalist groups. Georgia, which had a peaceful Rose Revolution in 2003 and is undergoing a violent revolution as we write, has a very different nationalist landscape to Ukraine, which underwent a peaceful Orange Revolution in 2004 and violent Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014, write Nicholas Chkhaidze and Taras Kuzio.

One important factor which reinforces the difference between Georgia and Ukraine is religion. Georgia’s Orthodox Church has close and friendly ties to the xenophobically anti-Western Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox Church supports what it calls Russia’s ‘holy war’ against Ukraine and has contempt for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, whose two predecessors supported the Orange and Euromaidan Revolutions, was granted autocephaly by Patriarch Constantinople Bartholomew I in 2019. The OCU

In Georgia and Ukraine, nationalists are electorally unpopular but during revolutions they play an outsized role as pro-Russian vigilantes in Georgia and anti-Russian protestors in Ukraine. In the Euromaidan Revolution, Ukrainian nationalist groups played a central role in confronting the Berkut riot police and Interior Ministry troops with 108 protestors and 13 security personnel killed and over a thousand wounded. In Georgia, nationalists have been hired as vigilantes by the pro-Russian regime led by Georgian-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili. During the Euromaidan Revolution, the pro-Russian regime led by President Viktor Yanukovych also mobilized vigilantes but from organized crime groups who were confronted by Ukrainian nationalists.

Ivanishvili moved from Russia to Georgia where he created a pro-Russian political force, Georgian Dream. The Kremlin’s hate figure in Georgia – former President Mikhail Saakashvili – was imprisoned nine years later on trumped up charges. The entrenchment of the pro-Russian regime led to the proliferation of pro-Russian far-right groups coupled with the growing influence of Russian soft power in Georgia. These pro-Russian far-right groups are the real ‘power source’ of the Georgian Dream regime, solidifying the country’s pivot away from the West, as well as embracing authoritarian and anti-European policies.

The Georgian March and similar far-right organizations have been frequently accused of having ties to Russia. This organization, which was established in 2017, brings together thousands of ultranationalists from all Georgia. Although they deny they are pro-Russian their discourse, nevertheless, are identical to those of the Kremlin and Russian nationalist parties and organizations.

The Georgian March is similarly named to the Russian March, which was the title of the neo-Nazi protests in Russia. Georgian nationalist organizations have never expressed opposition to the regime’s pro-Russian policies or towards Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the killings and kidnappings of Georgian civilians, and the creeping Russian annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Ethno-nationalist, Eurosceptic, and pro-Russian themes are frequently heard in far-right speeches and on social media, such as for example. The Kremlin has propagated anti-Western xenophobic and anti-LGBT discourse and disparaging and undermining Western liberalism as a propaganda tool within Russia and to its neighbors and to Europe. Since 2012, this anti-Western discourse and Russian soft power has grown in Georgia under Ivanishvili, culminating in the adoption of the ‘foreign agent law’ in May that required those receiving Western grants to be declared as ‘foreign agents.’ After the Euromaidan Revolution, Presidents Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelenskyy removed Russian soft power from Ukraine.

Moreover, other organizations, such as Georgia’s Demographic Revival Foundation, a division of the ultra-conservative World Congress of Families, and Eurosceptic and pro-Russian political party “ERI” were founded by another Kremlin-linked oligarch – Levan Vasadze. Vasadze had pursued religious studies in Moscow where he became associated with Russian imperial nationalistic circles in the Russian political elite, such as the fascist and Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin. In 2023, the Russian State University for the Humanities appointed Dugin to head the Ivan Ilyin Higher School of Politics; Ilyin was a White Russian émigré and fascist writer in the inter-war period.

The most notorious and most violent pro-Russian nationalist group in Georgia is the Conservative Movement, better known as Alt-Info, which has significantly increased its presence in Georgia over the past years. Nationwide demonstrations against the group and threats of violent reprisal have followed the group’s growth.

In Georgia, Alt-Info was already well-known for its illiberal viewpoints drawing on religious conservatism found in the Georgian Orthodox Church. Additionally, the group promotes Georgia’s close ties with Russia, claiming that normalizing relations with Russia would secure the country’s security better than pro-Western integration.

Alt Info declared that participated in the October parliamentary elections as a member of the pro-Russian Alliance of Patriots’ electoral bloc. Like nationalist groups in Ukraine, they are unable to win parliamentary seats. Nevertheless, Alt Info supports the pro-Russian Ivanishvili regime and their violent actions as vigilantes are ignored by the authorities. The police have refused to bring criminal charges against the group’s leaders for planning violent assaults on politicians, activists and journalists.

Most nationalist organizations in Georgia are pro-Russian and, with funding from covert sources, most likely the Kremlin through Ivanishvili, act as essentially Russian proxies operating in support of Russian national interests.

In Ukraine, nationalist organizations were primarily based in the western region which has traditionally been more anti-Russian than the rest of the country. Western Ukraine was never part of the Tsarist Empire and was only united with Ukraine during World War II. Indeed, its deep anti-Russian sentiments are such that Russian imperial nationalists do not lay claim to it, instead offering to divide Ukraine between itself and its western neighbors.

Western Ukrainian nationalist groups drew upon the tradition of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which had led an armed struggle against Soviet rule through the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) for a decade from the early 1940s to early 1950s. The Svoboda (Freedom) political party emerged in western Ukraine in the 1990s and was able to enter parliament once in 2012. During the Euromaidan Revolution, Svoboda and other nationalist groups created self-defense company’s (sotnia) which fought against riot police and pro-Russian vigilantes. After the Euromaidan Revolution, Svoboda created the Sych volunteer battalion to fight the first Russian invasion in the eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbas. Sych was one of forty volunteer battalions created by Ukrainian nationalists and patriots to fight Russian military aggression.

Pravyy Sektor (Right Sector), often the focus of the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrainian propaganda, was formed during the Euromaidan Revolution. During the first Russian invasion, Right Sector formed a volunteer battalion, the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (UVC). After the incorporation of volunteer battalions into the army and national guard, UVC remained independent and refusing to being absorbed, continuing to independently fight against Russian forces.

A third group, National Corps, was centered on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and many of its members were Russian speakers. In an earlier variant as the Social National Assembly, it had split from Svoboda in the mid-2000s when the latter had sought to become a more mainstream populist nationalist force.

National Corps was formed in 2016 two years after its members had risen to fame as the Azov volunteer battalion which had liberated the port city of Mariupol from pro-Russian proxies in May 2014. Azov became a special forces regiment in the national guard and the Third Separate Assault Brigade in the Ukrainian army. After Russia’s second invasion in 2022, Azov members heroically defended Mariupol for 86 days before hundreds were forced to surrender and become POWs.

Georgia’s nationalists are pro-Russian and allied to the pro-Russian Ivanishvili regime. They work with and are supported by the Georgian Orthodox Church. Ukraine’s three main nationalist groups – Freedom Party, Right Sector, and National Corps – were anti-Russian from their inception which grew in their violent fight against the pro-Russian Yanukovych regime and after Russia’s first invasion in 2014. The most virulently anti-Russian and extreme group was the eastern Ukrainian-based and in the main Russian-speaking Azov and National Corps. Autocephaly reinforced links between the anti-Russian OCU and nationalistic and patriotic groups in Ukraine. Since the 2022 invasion, all three Ukrainian nationalist groups have lost comrades in the war against Russia’s full-scale invasion and have become even more anti-Russian.

Ukraine’s nationalists, who were ready to take the fight to the security forces and die for their beliefs, tipped the balance in favor of the protestors during the Euromaidan Revolution. In Georgia, the absence of anti-Russian nationalists has led to a weaker, but still nevertheless still brave, revolution fighting against the security forces defending the pro-Russian Ivanishvili regime.

Nicholas Chkhaidze is a Research Fellow at the Baku-based Topchubashov Center. Taras Kuzio is professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. He is the author of Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War (2022).

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