This video delves into the complex geopolitical factors that could potentially drive Russia to undertake military action against Georgia. Exploring the historical context, regional dynamics, and strategic considerations, the video provides an in-depth analysis of the various issues that contribute to the tense relationship between the two countries.
Viewers will gain insights into Russia's security concerns, its interests in the Caucasus region, and the geostrategic importance of Georgia for both Russia and the West. The video examines the role of NATO expansion, energy security, ethnic tensions, and domestic political factors that may influence Russia's decision-making process.
By taking a nuanced and analytical approach, the video aims to foster a deeper understanding of the underlying issues at play, rather than making definitive predictions. The discussion encourages critical thinking about the multifaceted nature of geopolitical tensions and the delicate balance of power in the region.
Whether you're a student of international relations, a policymaker, or simply an individual interested in understanding the complexities of global affairs, this video offers a comprehensive and thought-provoking examination of the potential geopolitical dynamics between Russia and Georgia
Viewers will gain insights into Russia's security concerns, its interests in the Caucasus region, and the geostrategic importance of Georgia for both Russia and the West. The video examines the role of NATO expansion, energy security, ethnic tensions, and domestic political factors that may influence Russia's decision-making process.
By taking a nuanced and analytical approach, the video aims to foster a deeper understanding of the underlying issues at play, rather than making definitive predictions. The discussion encourages critical thinking about the multifaceted nature of geopolitical tensions and the delicate balance of power in the region.
Whether you're a student of international relations, a policymaker, or simply an individual interested in understanding the complexities of global affairs, this video offers a comprehensive and thought-provoking examination of the potential geopolitical dynamics between Russia and Georgia
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00:00As the devastating war in Ukraine continues grinding on without a clear end in sight,
00:04tensions are rapidly rising in another nation that borders Russia,
00:07who the Kremlin has previously invaded twice in only the past three decades.
00:11Georgia.
00:12In May of 2024, hundreds of thousands of Georgian citizens took to the streets in their nation's capital, Tbilisi,
00:18to protest against their government's passing of a new and highly controversial law in the country.
00:22The ruling party that governs in Georgia, the Georgian Dream Party,
00:25officially refers to this new law as the Transparency of Foreign Influence Bill.
00:29Once it enters into law, the bill will require that all NGOs and media companies operating in Georgia
00:34who receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad
00:37to register themselves as pursuing the interests of a foreign power in a public registry.
00:42The Georgian Dream Party argues that this bill is necessary to provide transparency
00:46on where NGOs and media companies in Georgia are receiving their funding from.
00:50But critics and opponents of the bill argue that it's almost identical to a similar law
00:54that was passed by Vladimir Putin's government in Russia back in 2012,
00:58which has enabled the Russian government ever since to suppress, crack down on,
01:01and shut down opposition media outlets and NGOs in the country.
01:05A pattern that could be replicated by the Georgian Dream Party to suppress the opposition in Georgia, too.
01:10For this reason, opponents of the Foreign Influence Bill have labeled it as the Russian law.
01:14But it's not the only reason why they've been calling it that.
01:17Because the bill's passing likely also carries with it tremendous geopolitical benefits for the Kremlin, too.
01:23Because it'll probably prevent Georgia from becoming accepted into the European Union and NATO as well.
01:29Both the EU and NATO have repeatedly stressed that Georgia's passing of the new Foreign Influence Bill
01:34will make them incompatible with their values,
01:37and that it will jeopardize Georgia's membership prospects as a result.
01:40For decades, most Georgians have long aspired to become a member of both blocks of nations,
01:45with current polling showing that almost 80% of the Georgian population
01:48desires their country to join the European Union,
01:51and another poll showing that roughly 87% of Georgians see the ongoing war in Ukraine as a shared cause.
01:57Having themselves been invaded by Russia twice in the past three decades,
02:01that resulted in 20% of their own internationally recognized territory falling under Russian military occupation.
02:07It was only a few months ago in December of 2023
02:10when Georgia was finally offered its long-awaited and much-coveted candidacy status by the European Union,
02:16which, if one day approved into a fully-fledged member state,
02:19would establish a disconnected chunk of the European Union across the Black Sea over in Western Asia,
02:24wedged in between Russia and Turkey,
02:26which would also make Georgia the fifth EU member state to share a direct border with Russia,
02:31after Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland.
02:34But it was only four months after Georgia received its EU candidacy status
02:38that the ruling Georgia Dream Party decided to reintroduce their controversial foreign influence law again.
02:44You see, the party had originally introduced the bill back in February of 2023,
02:48but after fierce protests erupted in the capital city against it, the bill was quickly withdrawn.
02:54This time, with the bill back in 2024, however,
02:56the Georgian government's response to the protesters has been significantly more heavy-handed than they ever were before,
03:02involving water cannons, tear gas, and even rubber bullets,
03:05as the Georgian Dream Party has made it explicitly clear
03:08that they are determined to pass the new law through regardless of how unpopular it might be,
03:13and regardless of how much it jeopardizes their ability to actually join the EU and NATO.
03:18There is therefore a major concern growing
03:20that the Georgian government is actively drifting the country back into the orbit of Russia again,
03:25a concern that hasn't been helped by many other of the government's actions recently,
03:29such as their arrest and imprisonment of the former pro-Western Georgian president
03:32and Ukrainian citizen Mikhail Saakashvili since 2021,
03:36their refusal to participate in any sanctions on Russia since the invasion of Ukraine,
03:40their resumption of direct air travel with Russia since 2023,
03:44and their dramatically increased trade volume with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine started,
03:49with Georgian exports to Russia rising by nearly 7% in 2022,
03:53and Georgian imports from Russia skyrocketing by 79% over the same time period.
03:59This has led the Ukrainian government to frequently criticize the Georgian government
04:03of assisting the Russians in evading sanctions,
04:06and tensions between them have gotten so high recently
04:08that Kiev recalled their ambassador to Tbilisi in June of 2022.
04:12And then, shortly after Georgia resumed the direct flights with Russia in 2023,
04:16Kiev even expelled the Georgian ambassador from their country
04:20and announced sanctions on Georgian airways as a consequence.
04:23And then, later in September of 2023,
04:25the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament even asserted that Ukraine was plotting a coup in Georgia
04:30to overthrow the Georgian Dream Party and push the country into the war with Russia.
04:34Since then, the Georgian government has repeatedly accused both the United States and Ukraine
04:39of attempting to push Georgia into joining the war against Russia,
04:42to reclaim their occupied territories,
04:44and to open up a second front for the Kremlin to have to deal with.
04:47And they've even gone so far as to openly accuse the US of plotting a coup in the country
04:51and fomenting the current high levels of unrest going on against them.
04:55And all of this is increasingly coming to the delight of Russia,
04:59who has openly praised the ruling Georgian Dream Party and its new foreign influence bill,
05:03while they still occupy 20% of Georgia's internationally recognized territory.
05:08Russia has also long maintained its own policy of keeping Georgia out of the EU and NATO as much as possible,
05:14just like they've done in Ukraine,
05:16because, like Ukraine, Georgia occupies an extremely important piece on the board of global geopolitics,
05:22especially from the perspective of Moscow.
05:25It is a space that both the West and Russia want to control
05:28and keep within their own respective camps for a plethora of important reasons.
05:32And in order to understand why, it helps to begin with sheer geography.
05:37Georgia is often considered to be a transcontinental country
05:40because it exists at the hard-to-define crossroads between Eastern Europe and Western Asia.
05:45The country's claimed territory straddles most of the Greater Caucasus mountain range,
05:49historically a valuable geographic frontier region separating the vast, flat Eurasian steppe in Southern Russia
05:55from the great empires that emerged in Western Asia like the Turks and the Persians.
05:59The region of the Caucasus has long been a battleground area for influence
06:03in the center between all three of these greater neighboring empires around it.
06:06And so, for centuries, the Russians have maintained a strong policy
06:10of controlling at least the Greater Caucasus mountains
06:13in order to control all of the access points from Western Asia into Southern Russia,
06:17where it's basically just flat, easily traversable land all the way from there to Ukraine and Volgograd,
06:22which, if captured, would isolate Russia from the Black and Caspian Seas.
06:26Geographically speaking, there are really only four viable overland transportation routes to take
06:31to travel through or around the Greater Caucasus mountains today.
06:34There are the two narrow coastal approaches to the west and the east of the mountains
06:38between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea,
06:40while the only two routes in between that run through or over the mountains
06:43are the Georgian Military Road here that follows the traditional mountain pass route
06:47used by invaders and merchants for centuries,
06:49and the nearby Roki Tunnel,
06:51a tunnel pass going through the mountains that was only built during the Soviet era and completed in 1984.
06:56If all four of these routes can be effectively controlled by Russia,
06:59then they can essentially control all land-based travel between Western Asia and Russia.
07:03And so, they can block any hostile land army from advancing from this direction
07:07into the exposed steppe of Southern Russia that is significantly more challenging to defend.
07:12Historically, this was Russia's primary concern with controlling the area around the Greater Caucasus mountains,
07:17which included Georgia.
07:19Georgia was steadily annexed by the Russians in the early 19th century in a piecemeal fashion,
07:24and then remained within the Russian Empire until the country collapsed during the First World War in 1917.
07:29Georgia then managed to briefly emerge as an independent republic
07:33before it was swallowed back up again by the Red Army in 1921
07:36and incorporated into the new Soviet Union.
07:39Georgia was then as it still is today,
07:41an ethnically and linguistically diverse place because of its mountainous geography.
07:45The Georgians were by far the largest single group and always made up a majority,
07:48but there were large minorities of Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Russians, Greeks,
07:52and two important lesser-known groups known as the Ossetians and the Abkhazians.
07:57The Ossetians are a disconnected Iranian ethnic group,
08:00more closely related to Kurds and Persians than any of their neighbors
08:03who straddled the border between Russia and Georgia,
08:05while the Abkhazians are a small Caucasian ethnic group,
08:08most closely related to the Circassians to the north and Russia.
08:11After the Soviet Union came to control the region,
08:14they established the Georgian Soviet Republic as a full Union Republic of the country.
08:18But within this republic, they also created the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast
08:22and the Abkhaz Autonomous Republic as well,
08:25which each maintained a high degree of autonomy separate from the rest of Georgia.
08:29This is how things largely remained within Georgia for decades
08:32until the Soviet Union began collapsing in 1989,
08:35and Georgian, Ossetian, and Abkhaz nationalism all began increasing in the ensuing power vacuum.
08:41At the time, the majority of Abkhaz and Ossetians wished to remain within the Soviet Union
08:45in order to remain closer to their Ossetian and Circassian kin in Russia,
08:49while the Georgians generally desired outright independence.
08:52Moscow began strategically supporting the South Ossetian and Abkhaz nationalist and separatist movements
08:57in order to apply leverage against the greater Georgian independence movement.
09:01And then, as tensions continued building,
09:03the local Georgian Soviet government unilaterally revoked the autonomy of South Ossetia in 1990
09:09without receiving approval from Moscow.
09:11Fighting erupted between the South Ossetians and the Abkhaz in the Georgian government,
09:15and after Georgia declared their independence from the Soviet Union in early 1991,
09:20the fighting in Abkhazia and South Ossetia transformed into separatist rebellions
09:24that the Russian government began actively supporting with arms and volunteers.
09:28By 1993, the Russian support to the Abkhaz and South Ossetian separatists had proved decisive,
09:34with separatist forces managing to secure control over the majority of the former autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
09:40During and after the war in Abkhazia in particular,
09:43the Abkhaz side perpetrated a mass ethnic cleansing campaign of the region's Georgian population.
09:48More than 200,000 ethnic Georgians were forcefully expelled at gunpoint from Abkhazia into the rest of Georgia,
09:55while more than 5,000 others were massacred by Abkhaz paramilitaries,
09:59which severely altered Abkhazia's demographics.
10:02Georgians plummeted from 45.7% of Abkhazia's population in 1989 to fewer than 18% by 2011,
10:10while the Abkhaz population rose from only 18% to about 51% of the total population over the same time period.
10:17Despite this, however, Georgia initially aligned itself closer to Russia
10:21by joining the Moscow-led defense alliance known as the Commonwealth of Independent States at the end of 1993,
10:27before withdrawing only half a decade later in 1999 along with Azerbaijan.
10:31And then after Vladimir Putin came to power as Russia's president in 2000,
10:35Russia began pursuing a more forward policy towards the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia with Georgia out of the CSTO.
10:42He led Russia into imposing a visa regime on Georgia at the end of 2000.
10:46And starting in 2002, he led Russia into rolling out a massive passport program to the residents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia
10:53without the Georgian government's approval,
10:56granting roughly 90% of each of their populations Russian passports
11:00and increasing Russian territorial claims to the regions in the process.
11:04Anger and resentment towards Georgia's conciliatory foreign policy to Russia,
11:08along with lingering political corruption and poverty,
11:11mounted and eventually culminated with the Rose Revolution of 2003,
11:15which overthrew the previous corrupt government led by Eduard Shevardnadze
11:19and catapulted the extremely pro-Western Mikhail Saakashvili into power as the country's next president instead,
11:25which radically altered Georgia's geopolitical alignment.
11:29The previous Georgian government had announced their intention to join NATO the year before the revolution in 2002
11:34as Russia began giving passports to the residents in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
11:38But Saakashvili was passionately adamant about Georgia's future in both NATO and the European Union,
11:44and he vowed that his top foreign policy priority was returning full Georgian control
11:49over the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia once again.
11:52And so, to help align Georgia more with the West
11:55and increase their odds of becoming accepted into NATO and the EU,
11:58Saakashvili led the country into sending large numbers of Georgian soldiers
12:02to support the U.S. war efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
12:05By 2008, Georgia had 2,300 of their soldiers deployed to Iraq,
12:10the third-highest number of all the states in the international coalition
12:13behind only the United States and the United Kingdom themselves.
12:17While in Afghanistan, Georgia became the largest non-NATO
12:20and by far the largest per capita troop contributor,
12:23with more than 1,500 soldiers deployed there by 2012.
12:27In total, between 2004 and 2021, more than 20,000 Georgian servicemembers served in Afghanistan,
12:33while 32 Georgian servicemen were killed in action and another 435 wounded in the country.
12:39Georgia's outsized contributions to Iraq and Afghanistan were, of course,
12:43deliberately crafted by Saakashvili's government to try and sway American and Western support
12:48for Georgia's admission to NATO and the European Union,
12:51in order to help Georgia eventually reassert its own control
12:54over their separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia again.
12:58But it wasn't just Georgia's military support in Iraq and Afghanistan
13:01that was making the country more attractive to the West either.
13:04It was also the increasingly valuable space that they occupied on the board.
13:08You see, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened up for the first time
13:12the massive oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea basin to the Western world.
13:17Approximately 3% of the world's oil reserves and about 7% of the world's natural gas reserves
13:22are found here around the Caspian.
13:24And while it used to all be dominated by the Soviets and blocked off from the West,
13:27the Soviet collapse placed the keys of the Caspian Sea's oil and gas resources
13:32into the hands of newly independent states like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan.
13:37Just about every major Western energy company you can think of
13:40began moving into the region across the 1990s to break themselves into the brand new market.
13:45But they quickly found that it was going to be geographically difficult
13:48to transport the region's energy resources from the landlocked Caspian Sea
13:52to markets far away in Europe.
13:54Initially, every oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea ran through Russia first,
13:59a legacy of Russia's dominance over these countries during the Soviet era.
14:03The Western energy companies wanted to construct their own oil and gas pipelines
14:06from the Caspian region that led back to Europe.
14:09But they wanted to avoid routing any of those pipelines through Iran to the south
14:13or through Russia to the north.
14:15And that left two possible options.
14:17The pipelines could either go from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey towards Europe,
14:22or they could go from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkey towards Europe instead.
14:28But at the time, Azerbaijan and Armenia had a very serious territorial dispute going on
14:33over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.
14:35And the two were effectively locked in a frozen war with one another.
14:39Azerbaijan refused to consider allowing this new export route to travel through their arch geopolitical rival.
14:45And so, to avoid Armenia, the Western energy companies, along with Azerbaijan and Turkey,
14:50decided to route their new Caspian oil export pipeline north through Georgia instead.
14:55Completed in 2005, the new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline enabled Azerbaijan
15:01to export their oil supplies through Georgia and Turkey towards the Turkish port of Ceyhan,
15:06where oil tankers carry the oil the rest of the way across the Mediterranean to markets all across Europe.
15:11The new route enabled Europe to lessen their dependence on oil imports coming in from the Middle East and Russia.
15:16And that gave Georgia's location controlling the center of the route a newfound strategic value to the Europeans.
15:23And then, everything began finally coming to a head in 2008.
15:27In February of that year, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia
15:31after being fully controlled by separatist forces for nearly the past decade.
15:35Kosovo's independence was almost immediately recognized by virtually every single Western country within a matter of months.
15:41And then, seizing on the precedent they believed it set,
15:44Abkhazia and South Ossetia each submitted a formal request to Russia
15:48to officially recognize their own independence from Georgia.
15:51And then, the month after that, in April of 2008, came the NATO summit in Bucharest,
15:56during which NATO's leaders publicly made promises that Georgia would one day soon
16:01be officially offered an invitation to join the alliance.
16:04But this prospect of Georgia entering into NATO horrified the Russians
16:08and was interpreted by Moscow as a firm red line that shouldn't be crossed.
16:13If Georgia flipped from being within Russia's CSTO military alliance to NATO,
16:17then Georgia would likely be supported by NATO into helping the Saakashvili government
16:22regain control over all of the separatist-controlled parts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
16:26which would then place NATO forces largely in control over three of the four primary entrances
16:31into the steppes of southern Russia.
16:33When factoring in Turkey, NATO's border with Russia would be extended continuously
16:37all the way to the Greater Caucasus Mountains themselves,
16:40while the eastern rim of the Black Sea would be extended under NATO maritime control
16:44to position NATO maritime and air assets precipitously close by to the Russian port of Novorossiysk,
16:50which is the second most significant naval base for the Russian Black Sea fleet
16:54after Sevastopol and Crimea, and even more importantly,
16:57it's also the most significant oil port on the Black Sea coast
17:01that sees about 2 million barrels of oil per day flowing through it
17:05as pipelines from Kazakhstan and Russia transport their oil
17:08to be loaded up onto tankers in the Novorossiysk harbor.
17:12And on top of all of that, Georgia's entrance into NATO would permanently drive a wedge
17:16between Russia and Armenia.
17:18Another member of the Moscow-led CSTO military alliance
17:21that would become hugely isolated from the rest of the alliance,
17:24which would then likely enable their rivals, Azerbaijan and Turkey,
17:27to begin steadily picking the country's territory apart
17:30without a clear geographic way for their ally Russia to actually intervene to stop them.
17:35Georgia's entrance into NATO would also solidify the West's control
17:38over the Azerbaijani oil pipeline route to Sayhan,
17:41which would serve to continue Europe's ability to lessen their economic reliance
17:45on Russian oil and energy resources in the long term.
17:48And while Russia knew that NATO was not plotting an imminent invasion of southern Russia
17:52after adding Georgia to the alliance,
17:54most states that operate in the international system, including Russia,
17:58are more concerned about capability than intent.
18:01Intent to invade can evolve with time.
18:03After all, there were few in Russia who perceived Germany
18:06to be a major existential threat in 1930.
18:08But it only took 11 years from then for Germany to launch
18:11an all-out genocidal war of conquest into Russia anyway.
18:15And while intent can evolve with time,
18:17geographic capability to attack remains constant.
18:20Georgia's admission into NATO and their subsequent subjugation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
18:25would place NATO forces immediately opposite of the Greater Caucasus Mountains,
18:29with three of the primary entrances into flat southern Russia largely under their control.
18:34A highly sensitive part of the country was Russia's own most serious active separatist movements
18:39in Chechnya and Dagestan, where there were still major active armed insurgencies going on at the time.
18:45Russia was fearful that NATO could then utilize its new position in Georgia
18:49to inflame or even support the separatist movements in Chechnya and Dagestan
18:53and undermine Russia even further,
18:55especially after they witnessed NATO attack Serbia in 1999
18:58and prop up the separatist movement in Kosovo afterwards.
19:01If NATO did something similar to support the separatist movements in Chechnya and Dagestan
19:07and then they allow NATO troops into their territories as peacekeepers,
19:11just like Kosovo did after 1999,
19:13the NATO forces would gain a direct foothold on the Eurasian steppe itself
19:17on the northern side of the Greater Caucasus Mountains,
19:20with a clear shot for tanks to advance across the flat terrain towards Astrakhan and Volgograd,
19:26two of Russia's most strategically important cities
19:29because they control the Volga River and Russia's access to the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea.
19:34In the 20th century, when Volgograd was better known as Stalingrad,
19:38the city's strategic importance was considered so great
19:41that the Soviets paid as many as 2 million lives to push the German invaders away from it.
19:47And for all of these myriad reasons,
19:49Putin's Russia calculated that NATO's promises of Georgia's membership in the alliance
19:53at the Bucharest summit in April of 2008 were simply unacceptable,
19:57and they began preparing for war.
19:59A few months later in August of 2008,
20:01fighting broke out between South Ossetian separatist forces and the Georgian army,
20:05and Russia seized on the opportunity it presented
20:08by launching a full-scale land, sea, and air invasion of Georgia
20:12in the name of supposedly protecting the South Ossetians from a genocide
20:16that they falsely alleged the Georgians were carrying out in the territory.
20:19Russia claimed that their 2008 invasion of Georgia was a peacekeeping operation
20:23the same way that NATO asserted that their 1999 bombing of Serbia
20:27an intervention in Kosovo was.
20:29Hundreds of soldiers were killed,
20:31around 200,000 people were forcibly displaced,
20:34including tens of thousands of Georgians
20:36who were ethnically cleansed and pushed out of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
20:39South Ossetia and Abkhazia's independences were each officially recognized by Russia,
20:43and both effectively came fully under Russian military occupation,
20:47with the establishment of multiple Russian military bases in each of them.
20:5020% of Georgia's internationally recognized territory
20:53then effectively became extensions of Russia,
20:56and Georgia reacted by severing all diplomatic relations with Russia,
20:59which has remained the case up until the present day.
21:02Russia's victory in the war proved to be a strategic boon
21:05for the Kremlin's geographic positioning around the Greater Caucasus Mountains.
21:09Their capture of Abkhazia extended Russia's control of the Black Sea coast,
21:13established a buffer away from their critical port of Novorossiysk,
21:16and secured firm Russian control over the western coastal entrance
21:19from Western Asia into southern Russia,
21:21while their capture of South Ossetia solidified Russia's control
21:24over the entire extent of the Roki Tunnel passing through the mountains
21:27and set the Russians up on a strategic high ground area
21:30only two kilometers away from the Georgian Military Road Pass,
21:34which could enable Russian forces to easily sever the road in the event of a crisis
21:38and effectively shut down all possible overland travel routes
21:41from Western Asia to southern Russia.
21:43It also placed Russian forces within very close striking distance
21:46of the Baku-Tbilisi-Seyhan oil pipeline,
21:49that almost runs right up against South Ossetian territory,
21:52meaning that if they wanted to in the event of a crisis,
21:55it would be very easy for Russia to sever the pipeline
21:58and eliminate what is today a vital oil and gas artery for Europe.
22:02Further still, South Ossetia's control enabled Russian tanks and artillery
22:06to position themselves fewer than 50 kilometers
22:09or only about 30 miles away from the Georgian capital of Tbilisi,
22:13a gun permanently pointed to Georgia's head
22:15to not continue advancing its relations with the West again or else.
22:20After the disaster of the 2008 war,
22:23Mikhail Saakashvili lost the next Georgian presidential election
22:26to the reclusive billionaire Bidzina Ivanashvili
22:29and his newly founded Georgian Dream Party.
22:31Georgian Dream has remained in power in Georgia ever since,
22:34and while Ivanashvili only served as the country's official leader
22:37for a single year from 2012 to 2013,
22:40he has been widely believed to have maintained his power
22:43over the party and the leaders they've appointed to govern in Georgia
22:46behind closed doors ever since.
22:48Ivanashvili was born into poverty in Soviet Georgia,
22:50but he relocated to Moscow in the 1980s
22:53and managed to emerge as a newly minted oligarch
22:55in the mining and banking industries
22:57during the gangster-ridden chaos of Russia in the 1990s,
23:00before eventually returning back to his native Georgia again.
23:03Today, Ivanashvili is by far the wealthiest man alive in Georgia,
23:08with an estimated net worth of approximately 6 billion US dollars,
23:11which is roughly equivalent to a third of Georgia's entire annual GDP.
23:15He ran on a campaign in 2012 of balancing Georgia's complicated relationship
23:19between Russia and the West,
23:21and positioned himself with his decades of prior experience
23:24in business relations with Russia as a guarantor of further stability,
23:28while he painted Mikhail Saakashvili as being a too pro-Western figure
23:32who would only continue exacerbating tensions with Moscow
23:35that could provoke another war.
23:37The strategy proved very effective, and in the years since then,
23:40the Georgian Dream has argued that in order for Georgia
23:42to ever become accepted into institutions like the EU and NATO,
23:46the country requires stable and normalized relations with Russia first,
23:50so that the West doesn't ever believe that Georgia will drag them into a war.
23:54The party paid lip service to continuing with Georgia's bids to join NATO and the EU,
23:58but in reality carried out very little actual efforts to pursue them,
24:01as it sought to repair the shattered relationship with Russia first.
24:06Meanwhile, Georgia's geopolitical position to the West
24:08has grown increasingly more important since the Georgian Dream took over.
24:12Between 2008 and 2020, approximately $45 billion was invested
24:17into developing a series of natural gas pipelines
24:20connecting the massive gas fields of Azerbaijan with Europe
24:23that has become known as the Southern Gas Corridor.
24:26And just like the previous Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that came before it,
24:30the Southern Gas Corridor routes through Georgia instead of Armenia
24:34due to Azerbaijan's opposition of having it routed through their arch-rival Armenia.
24:39Azerbaijan's direct natural gas exports to Europe through the Southern Gas Corridor
24:43began only in 2020,
24:45and then the route became even more critically important in 2022
24:49after the Russians invaded Ukraine,
24:51and Europe decided to rapidly shift their previously high imports of Russian oil and gas
24:55to alternative providers instead.
24:57Azerbaijan, with its massive gas fields in the Caspian Sea
25:01and existing infrastructure and relationships already in place,
25:04was one of the most logical alternatives for the Europeans to court for additional supplies.
25:09And as a result, Azerbaijan pledged to double their pre-invasion gas exports to Europe
25:13through the Southern Gas Corridor by 2027.
25:16By which point, if all else remains equal,
25:18Azerbaijan will be providing the European Union with as much as 6-7%
25:23of their entire natural gas consumption through the pipeline that runs through Georgia,
25:28which dramatically increases Georgia's strategic significance to the West.
25:32And so, that largely explains why the European Union finally granted Georgia
25:37their long-awaited candidacy status just a few months ago in December of 2023.
25:42And now, Russia would like to keep Georgia out of joining the EU and NATO
25:46for very similar reasons as they did back in 2008.
25:49But they also have even more reasons to prevent Georgia from aligning too closely with the West today, too.
25:55With the Russian Navy suffering heavy losses to the Ukrainians since the war began in 2022,
26:00the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been largely driven out of its traditional bases in Crimea
26:04and forced to relocate itself to Novorossiysk on the Black Sea's eastern rim.
26:08While there has been much discussion about expanding the Black Sea Fleet's presence in Abkhazia,
26:13with a proposed new deep-water base that could end up being constructed here at Ochemchayr,
26:17which would place Russian naval assets based there out of range of most of Ukraine's weapons
26:22while still enabling them to continue operating in the Black Sea region.
26:25Developing the port at Ochemchayr would serve a dual-purpose objective for the Kremlin,
26:29because it would also jeopardize the EU's plans to assist Georgia
26:33with developing their own nearby deep-water port here at Anaklia.
26:36As it currently stands now, Georgia doesn't have any deep-water ports,
26:41which means that only smaller displacement ships can carry goods
26:44from the country's two primary ports at Batumi and Poti,
26:47which severely restricts the volume of goods that Georgian ports are capable of actually exporting.
26:52If Anaklia was therefore developed into the country's first proper deep-water port,
26:57it could handle substantially larger cargo container vessels than what is currently possible,
27:01which would enhance Georgia's ability to export large volumes of products,
27:05which would greatly enhance Georgia's geopolitical location
27:09at the epicenter of what is being called the Middle Corridor trade route.
27:13A proposed trade network of freight railways, highways, ports, and ferries
27:17connecting China with Europe by land, without having any part of the route
27:20traveling through Western geopolitical opponents like Iran or Russia,
27:24or Azeri and Turkish geopolitical opponents like Armenia.
27:27This makes Georgia the absolute linchpin in making the Middle Corridor route actually viable,
27:33as the transformation of Anaklia into a deep-water harbor
27:36would open up the ability for Chinese-manufactured goods to travel over land to the port
27:40and then get moved en masse aboard large cargo container vessels the rest of the way to markets in Europe,
27:46all while avoiding Russia, Iran, and Armenia in the process.
27:50In addition to all of the critical oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea to Europe that runs through Georgia,
27:55this makes Georgia an absolutely critical space for the Europeans to consider having aligned on their side,
28:01and it's why the Europeans are very interested in helping the Georgians with developing this deep-water port at Anaklia.
28:07EU companies as well as Chinese companies have all staked out bids to construct the port,
28:12while the Russians would clearly prefer the Chinese to construct and develop the port over the Europeans,
28:17in order to ensure Chinese influence and control over the entire length of the Middle Corridor trade route.
28:23Russia might even simply prefer that Anaklia never be developed at all,
28:26in order to just block the Middle Corridor route's viability entirely,
28:30and force Europe to continue relying either on the Northern Corridor land route that runs through Russia,
28:35or the much longer Southern Maritime route through the Suez Canal or around the Cape of Africa.
28:40And what better way to shut the port's prospects down than by constructing a brand new naval base in Abkhazia at Ochemchayr,
28:46only 36 kilometers away from it that could become a target of the war in Ukraine.
28:51Georgia has entertained both sides in the port's development,
28:55and Georgia is well aware of their increased geopolitical value to both the West and to Russia since 2022.
29:01It may even be possible that the Georgian Dream government has weaponized the prospect of them drawing closer to Russia and China,
29:07in order to simply exert more leverage on Western countries and companies,
29:10to get better terms out of them on Anaklia's development and ownership.
29:14But now, with the imminent passing of the Georgian Dream's new foreign influence law in the country
29:18that could enable the government to crack down on opposition media outlets and suppress dissent,
29:22Georgia's geopolitical future has never been more up in the air as it is now.
29:27The EU and NATO have both heavily criticized the law and have said that its passing is incompatible with their values,
29:33which jeopardizes Georgia's ability to align itself with the West and might push the government
29:38to move even further than it already has into the camp of Russia and China.
29:42It's also conceivably possible that the wide-scale protests going on in Georgia right now against the law
29:48could eventually evolve into a Georgian version of the Maidan revolution
29:53that exploded in Ukraine back in 2014 that toppled what was then Ukraine's deeply pro-Russian government.
29:59But if something like that were to happen again in Georgia today,
30:02it is almost a certainty that the moment it appeared the Georgian Dream party was about to lose its grip on power,
30:08the Kremlin would calculate that another military intervention into the country to support them would become necessary.
30:14Moscow would almost certainly attempt to label any potential revolt in Georgia as a US- and Ukraine-backed color revolution and coup,
30:21and then they would use that as a pretext to justify sending in soldiers again in support of the government.
30:26And just because the Russian armed forces are massively bogged down at the moment in Ukraine
30:31doesn't mean that Moscow wouldn't have the bandwidth to also send in an intervention in Georgia.
30:36There is very, very high precedent for Russia doing things like this,
30:40going back to their 2014 intervention in Ukraine after the Maidan revolution when they seized Crimea,
30:45their 2020 intervention into Belarus to help quash pro-Western protests
30:49that erupted against the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko,
30:52and their January 2022 intervention into Kazakhstan to help quash anti-government protests that had erupted there as well.
30:59Approximately 2,000 Russian soldiers had been deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan as peacekeepers.
31:06But after Azerbaijan overran the territory in September of 2023 and the Armenian government collapsed there,
31:12the Russians suddenly announced in April of 2024 that they would be withdrawing all 2,000 of their troops from the area.
31:18And it's anyone's best guess where they might end up getting redeployed to.
31:21Potentially to Ukraine, or to potentially monitor the evolving situation in Georgia.
31:26If Russia had the excuse to launch an intervention into Georgia again today,
31:30they could deliberately sabotage the major oil and gas pipelines in Georgia connecting Azerbaijan's fields to Europe,
31:36which would eliminate a huge amount of Europe's energy supplies
31:39and apply significantly higher economic and inflationary pressures on Europe in the process.
31:44They could also claw out a land bridge to their theoretical CSTO ally Armenia,
31:49and establish a continuous land connection all the way to Iran in the process,
31:53who is increasingly becoming a close economic and military ally of Russia's today.
31:58And they would also guarantee that the Middle Corridor trade route project between the West and China
32:03would be forever a dead and buried idea,
32:06enhancing their own leverage on Europe to come back to relying on their own Northern Corridor trade route instead.
32:11Since the Georgian Dream Party often tries to portray themselves as the agents of stability between the East and the West,
32:17and the only thing that stands between the Georgian people and another Russian invasion,
32:21the Kremlin might also reason that another major intervention into Georgia
32:26could serve the purpose of effectively shocking the Georgian population into falling back in line
32:31with their own increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russian government.
32:34In the end, Georgia's future is a deeply uncertain one right now,
32:38and it remains to be seen how the country's geography will continue affecting its complicated destiny
32:43between East and West going forward.
32:47Now, there's a lot of data that goes into producing these kinds of videos.
32:50Whether it's showing the percentages of Georgians who wish to join the European Union,
32:54why Russia is so concerned about controlling the Greater Caucasus Mountains Range,
32:58how much of the world's oil and gas reserves can be found around the Caspian Sea,
33:01and how the Europeans and Western energy companies chose to route their pipelines from the area,
33:05the ability to visualize raw data like this on the map is exactly what makes learning so much easier.