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A flock of magpies bursts and swiftly rises from the thistles and dry brush ahead, spooked by the grind and jolt of the 4×4 against breakers carved out and frozen solid in the mud. Under patches of unthawed snow aligning the track there are lonely rose hips and half-burnt mounds of refuse in the bracken, fenced cemeteries cloistered in thickets at the outset of hills rising steep and pale in the mid-afternoon sun.
Gamdlistkaro is a quiet place. An hour’s drive northwest of Tbilisi, its corrugated iron rooftops and crumbling cinderblock walls stand a half-kilometre south of the administrative boundary with Georgia’s breakaway region of Tskhinvali, occupied by Russian troops since the fall of the Soviet Union.
It may be 74-year-old Ramaz Tsutori’s home, but there are parts of the village he dares not venture, having been kidnapped from his vineyard by FSB border agents in the winter of 2013. Given his release less than a week later, he says the sole purpose of the abduction was to instill fear in the local community, driving residents away so as to cement control of the areas along the occupation line.
“The situation here is very tough. All the youths have already left the village, and in the school there are only three children,” Tsutori explained. “Because we cannot work on our own land, we are forced to rely on government subsidies to survive.”
On the same day Byline Times spoke with Tsutori, a seismic sequence of events was unfolding at rapid pace halfway across the world in Washington, with members of Elon Musk’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ launching what was effectively a raid of USAID.
Musk’s ransacking of the US international aid agency, which he’s described as a “corrupt” and “criminal” organisation, followed less than a week after President Donald Trump announced a 90-day funding freeze as part of his ‘America First’ foreign policy pivot — one that has since decimated the global humanitarian and development sectors.
In Georgia, this rug-pull on longstanding US support for civil society and independent media, and the accompanying demonisation of those once administering that support, has handed a budding authoritarian regime carte blanche to further pursue an already brutal slew of repressions that have followed October’s rigged elections.
As the country’s security apparatus continues its attacks on Government critics, former officials warn Georgia’s Interior Ministry in particular has now embarked on an accelerating slide into lawlessness, and that with little to no effort being expended on its mandate to monitor and secure the occupation line people like Tsutori have seldom, if ever, been left more exposed.
From Bad to Worse
Georgia had consistently sought closer ties with Western governments since its independence from the Soviet Union, not least in hope of greater security guarantees following a disastrous 16-day war with Russia in 2008 that saw Moscow consolidate control of Georgia’s breakaway territories of Tskhinvali and Abkhazia.
But since 2022, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has upended geopolitical dynamics across the region. Led by Russian-made oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, the ruling Georgian Dream party has dismantled long-standing relations with the US, the UK and the EU over the past three years, demonising these erstwhile allies as agents of a conspiratorial ‘global war party’ as part of what critics describe as a concerted effort to reorient Georgia back toward the Kremlin’s orbit.
By the end of last year, an accompanying slide into authoritarianism — borne out by widespread allegations of rigging at parliamentary polls held in October, as well as horrific acts of violence and torture against protesters opposed to the government scrapping Georgia’s bid for EU accession — had seen international sanctions brought against Ivanishvili and other officials responsible for the mounting wave of repressions.
Trump’s victory at the November elections prompted bizarre scenes on the streets of Tbilisi. Adorned in US and EU and Georgian flags, demonstrators assembled in their thousands to celebrate in hopes the then-thriving resistance movement would enjoy continued support under the new Republican administration.
Georgian Dream, meanwhile, welcomed Trump’s triumph with the confidence of fellow nationalist-populists backed by the American president’s staunch advocate in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
For now, Trump has little interest in a country likely neither he nor the vast majority of his support base could place on a map. But that vacuum has only emboldened Georgian Dream to further intensify its attacks on government critics in the months that have followed since the US presidential polls.
At a protest held earlier this month in defiance of measures criminalising road blockades, a crucial feature of anti-government demonstrations in Georgia, footage appeared to show a high-ranking government employee personally participating in the beating of demonstrators.
Already sanctioned by several partner states, including the US and the UK, for his role in coordinating the brutalisation of arrestees, that man is believed to have been head of the Interior Ministry’s Department of Special Tasks (DST), Zviad ‘Khareba’ Kharazishvili.