Nobody Likes the Georgians… Except Me

There is a battalion of Georgians (the Tbilisi kind, not the Atlantans) fighting for Ukraine against Putin. They call themselves the Georgian Legion, twenty-five hundred or so of them. Putin loses more than that every three days. They’re not really significant to the war but they’re fighting and they’re needed and what more can you ask?

The Legion does not have a storied history, like, say, Patton’s First Armored, rolling through Germany. No, military Georgian ex-pats have historically drifted to the sides we oppose. They were pro-Kaiser, anti-Turk (well, OK), anti-Armenian, pro-Third Reich, then pro-Stalin et al. Sometimes forced, sometimes conscripted, often volunteers. I must also note that they were our partners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I lived in Tbilisi for 3-1/2 years early this century. I like and love many Georgians and I have experienced their love for America and the west. I have witnessed their military and met with military advisors. There was always one constant: “We want to align with the west, not with Russia.”

The October 27 parliamentary elections in Georgia offered a turn towards the west. But, no, the ruling Georgian Dream party seems to have skewed the results toward Moscow. At least, Georgians think so, more than 70% of them. Thus, the massive street protests in Tbilisi and elsewhere. They want free and fair elections, that’s all, not the sham they got in October.

The Georgian Legion (I opened with them, remember?) has threatened to come home, all 2,500 of them, to insure a new free election. There would be unintended consequences, of course. It is easy to imagine the Legion rallying to the established Georgian military rather than, say, the secret police. 

What would rich man/owner-of-everything Bidzina Ivanishvili (look him up) do then? Would he throw his private army and police forces against the Legion and military? If he loses the Legion and his army, there will be only so much blood left. Will he spill it on the beautiful streets of Tbilisi where I have walked so many times? Or will he leave and take his already-hidden massive wealth with him?

Or, given that Georgia is already a Russian-occupied country, will Putin move Russian troops from South Ossetia into Tbilisi and Kutaisi. They are only thirty miles from Tbilisi already. Why not, under the pretext of mutual aid? The streets of Tbilisi have run red with innocent blood before. It was only sixteen years ago that Putin bombed the Tbilisi airport and communications towers. The targets that are thirty miles away by road are only one minute away by air.

Keep an eye on Tbilisi. Ukraine isn’t the only place where Putin is carrying out his USSR reunification plan. It’s working, so far.