The striking choice of Georgians looking for a future as part of Europe

Georgians know all about Russia’s wars. A few years before Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia’s military launched a five-day war in August 2008. The city of Gori was bombed and occupied, while further north heavy fighting in Shindisi resulted in the destruction of the station and the abandonment of the railway.

So while four opposition groups in the country describe Saturday’s crucial election as a choice between Russia or Europe, their aim is to end the 12-year rule of the ruling Georgian Dream party, which they accuse of returning to Russia’s orbit.

They want to revive Georgia’s stalled accession process to the European Union.

“There were Russians in these streets,” says Mindia Goderdzishvili, who campaigned in Gori on behalf of the opposition group Coalition for Change. “People here have this in their memories and the government is misusing it, playing with their emotions because they want to stay in power.”

Georgian Dream, known as GD, and its powerful billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili strongly reject the opposition’s framing of the vote as a choice between Russia or Europe.

They claim that they are the party of peace, while the opposition, supported by an unidentified “global war party”, wants to drag Georgia into war.

A short distance from the bombed station in Shindisi are the graves of 17 Georgian soldiers who died defending the town. The dividing line is not far north from here, and beyond it is South Ossetia, one of two regions seceding from Georgia that are still under Russian military occupation.

“I don’t think anyone can guarantee Georgia’s security today,” Maka Bochorishvili, head of Georgia’s EU integration committee, told the BBC at Georgian Dream’s new headquarters in Tbilisi.

“We are not members of NATO, we do not have that umbrella over our heads. It has not been long since the last war of 2008.”

His party still pledges to take the former Soviet republic of Georgia into the European Union by 2030, but that pledge appears hollow when the EU has suspended the process over a law targeting “foreign influence” that threatens countless media and civil society groups.

If you add to this the new law targeting LGBT rights in Georgia, it is no surprise that EU ambassador Pawel Herczynski thinks that “Georgia is moving further away from the European Union rather than closer to it.”

Georgia’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, has publicly called on voters to support opposition groups that support a one-year technocratic government plan if they win.

Much of the attention in this election has focused on Georgia’s richest man, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s and is considered the guiding force behind the ruling party.

Ivanishvili entered Saturday’s election promising to ban the United National Movement, the largest opposition party, for its actions before GD came to power.

UNM’s former leader Mikheil Saakashvili has been jailed, but GD wants to go after other opposition figures so the ban could extend far beyond one party. For this to happen, they need to win a large majority.

This seems unlikely, although polls in Georgia are unreliable and questions have been raised about the secrecy of the vote despite the new electronic voting system.

Ivanishvili visited Gori during the election campaign and promised to apologize to the people of South Ossetia for the 2008 war, placing the blame on Saakashvili’s government rather than the Russians who bombed the city.

The billionaire doubled down on that at the party’s final campaign rally in central Tbilisi on Wednesday. Speaking through protective glass, he told his supporters that the UNM had committed treason.

His logic is likely that by going after the largest opposition party, voters will be deterred from supporting any of the others.

According to Aleksandre, a 30-year-old voter living in Shindisi, the idea that Saakashvili started the war is “absurd”.

Most people his age left the town due to the lack of opportunities there.

He prefers the government focus on reviving the rail line and protecting Georgians from Russia’s slow encroachment on Georgian territory.

The Kremlin has made no secret of its preference for the Georgian Dream.

A few months ago, Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service accused the United States of preparing to stage a Ukrainian-style revolution in the streets to prevent the GD from winning a fourth term in office. There was no evidence of SVR’s claim and the US denied it.

Now Russia has embraced Georgian Dream’s founder’s false claim that a senior foreign official asked Georgia’s former prime minister to join the war with Russia “for three or four days.”

“I see no reason not to believe this,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian media.

Gori’s memory of Georgia’s northern neighbor is not based solely on what happened in 2008.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin grew up here, and tourists come here to see his childhood home and personal railroad car, but guides no longer ignore the millions he sent to die in Soviet labor camps.

Opposition campaigners in Gori say some voters have an enduring affection for the Soviet era, but many have given up on it.

The general consensus here and across Georgia is that their future lies within the European Union, not outside it. What is less clear is who they think will give them that chance.