Protests Over Russian Cruise Ship Embody Georgia’s Tensions with Moscow

Friday, 4 August, 2023

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Giorgi Lomsadze

Tbilisi-based journalist

When the Astoria Grande luxury liner docked in Batumi on July 27, its Russian passengers expected to spend a few days enjoying the entertainment, gambling and shopping facilities of Georgia’s main seaport.

Instead, the tourists, in the middle of a semi-circumnavigation voyage of the Black Sea, found themselves faced with angry protestors hurling eggs at the cruiseship and insults at those on board.

Holding Ukrainian and Georgian flags, a crowd of protesters suggested that the liner sailed off to do the very thing that Ukrainian border guards famously told an attacking Russian warship to do.

With Russian tourists and Kremlin-friendly entertainers aboard, the liner embodied everything many Georgians feel is wrong with keeping the nation’s doors wide open to visitors from the northern neighbour.

“They are coming here to party while their government is killing people in Ukraine and is tearing our country apart,” one protester told IWPR, in reference to Georgia’s two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Moscow recognised as independent states following the 2008 war and where it retains troops.

The Russian visitors, however, were unrepentant. Some said that Soviet Union was alive and well, and Georgia was still a part of it.

“We are all Soviet Union, one large beautiful nation,” one passenger told Formula TV.

A large police force was deployed to contain the protesters and provide safe passage for the Russians who eventually came ashore to proceed with their planned tour. Some Russian voyagers blew kisses, danced and made rude gestures at the crowd in the harbour. Clashes ensued and 23 people were arrested, including a Ukrainian woman.

OPEN-DOOR POLICY

Many Georgians insist that their government should not be doing business with Russia until Moscow stops its assault on Ukraine and reverses its policies toward Georgia’s breakaway territories.

Irakli Kobakhidze, chairman and the designated speaker for the governing Georgian Dream party (GD), decried the protests as an opposition-planned provocation.

“What we are seeing today is plain foolhardiness…Georgia paid dearly for such foolhardiness in the past,” he told the government-friendly Imedi news network, referring to past conflicts with Russia.

The government has been normalising Tbilisi’s relations with Moscow, but its detractors accuse it of selling out to the Kremlin and subverting Georgia’s path toward Western integration. Much of the criticism has focused on the open-door policy toward Russian tourism and trade that contradicts the West’s economic isolation of Moscow.

Batumi, Georgia’s second largest city and main Black Sea resort, is full of Russian tourists, migrants and businesses.

“There is a certain irony in protesting against Russians on a boat, while there are way more Russians on the shore,” political commentator Jaba Devdariani told IWPR, adding that the real issue was Georgia’s broader openness to tourism and trade with Russia. “If Georgia keeps its land borders and airports open to Russians, how are the seaports different?”  

Tens of thousands of Russians relocated to Georgia in the wake of invasion of Ukraine, some in protest at the war, others to skirt international sanctions, although the majority came to escape military mobilisation. Many Georgians view this mass arrival of Russians as a soft-power occupation of their country.

While most Russian migrants are aware of the sore points in two countries’ relations and decry Moscow’s military campaigns against Ukraine and Georgia, the tourism season brings a different kind of crowd.

When the Astoria Grande made its first call in Batumi on July 27, comments by some Russian visitors sparked anger that eventually led to the July 31 protests.

“You used to be our republic or something like that,” one tourist said on July 27 in response to a Georgian journalist’s question about Russian control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “We are not occupiers,” she said.  

A middle-aged Siberian couple interviewed by IWPR on a Batumi beach were full of praise for President Vladimir Putin, widely vilified in Georgia.

“He is fighting against fascists in the world,” one of them said. “The West is afraid to fight Russia directly, so they are trying to provoke you [the Georgians] and Ukrainians into a conflict with Russia.”

Declining to provide their names, the couple said they knew nothing of Russia’s involvement in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia conflicts, dismissing reports of war crimes committed in Ukraine as American lies.

PRINCIPLES VERSUS PRAGMATISM

As usual when tensions flare in Georgia over Russian visitors and investment, the authorities have been at pains to highlight the economic benefit. Kobakhidze said that each visiting Russian cruise liner brought 350,000 US dollars to the Georgian economy.

“If Russian tourists stop coming, Georgia will lose an annual income of one billion dollars, which means that 20-30,000 jobs will be lost,” he said.

Devdariani said that there was also an element of diplomatic expediency to this approach.

“The Georgian authorities always try to trump patriotism with pragmatism in debates over Russia, they say that shutting doors to Russian visitors will be perceived as a hostile move by Moscow,” he told IWPR, adding that Georgian Dream used potential repercussions of angering the Kremlin as a key counterargument to criticism.  

“All money is good, they [authorities] say, placing mercantile logic above moral arguments,” Devdariani concluded.

While such logic may anger some, it strikes a chord with others who benefit economically from Russians or fear aggression from Moscow.  

“I have Russian tenants every summer,” Natela Kobakhidze (no relation to the ruling party’s chairman), a homeowner from Batumi, said. “This is the main source of income for me and for many in this city. I don’t think this means we are supporting war in Ukraine. We are just renting out rooms to them. It’s not that we are giving them kalashnikovs.”