Ideas - God, parades and authoritarianism on the streets of Georgia

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Accusations of a stolen election, laws targeting NGOs and media, violent treatment of protestors — sometimes live on TV. What’s happening in the republic of Georgia right now typifies what is happening geopolitically around the world. The authoritarian ruling party called Georgian Dream aligns itself with Russia but most citizens want the country to join the European Union. There have been 400 consecutive days of protests before 2026 against the Georgian Dream government.Radio documentary makers David Zane Mairowitz and Malgorzata Zerwe were in the capital Tbilisi, and to record the Family Purity Parade and a demonstration, each from opposing ends of the political spectrum, for this documentary.

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This is a CBC podcast. Accusations of a stolen election. Laws targeting NGOs and media. Violent treatment of protesters. A threat to imprison all members of opposition political parties. The list of recent anti-democratic actions by the government of Georgia is long. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. What's happening in Georgia,

is a real-time case study in the escalating global drift towards authoritarianism. Stand for Georgia, Gowmardos, does not justice, no freedom. And another one is fire to oligarchy. Since November 24, tens of thousands of people have been taking to the streets to protest against the government, which goes by the name Georgian Dream. This demonstration was recorded on the 9th, of May 2025. The date wasn't chosen at random.

It's Europe Day, with people marching towards Europa Square from every direction in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Twenty years ago, I was shooting a film about the cult of Joseph Stalin here in Georgia, where the dictator was born. I saw this as the historical basis for an endless stream of authoritarian regimes in this country. For the last few years, I've watched it from afar happening all over again. I had to come back and see for myself. Georgia is remote and dwarfed by most of its neighbors, particularly Russia to the north. Georgia has a population of just under four million, so it's not a superpower.

But it is officially moving away from the cult of Stalin and Russian influence by seeking membership in the European Union. David Zane Myrovitz and Malgajata Jervais bring us their documentary titled Dreaming Georgians versus Georgian dream. Today Malgojata and I are marching along together with the pro-European crowd. Today we will start marching. Some group is going through the embankment and another one through Rustavelli Avenue and then we will gather all at the European square. Before the march, our guide and interpreter, the actress Tina Lagidze, suddenly pulls her scarf over her face as we cross the boulevard. I'm putting now above to cover my face because cameras they zoom on our faces and recognize us and tomorrow I can get the bill for

5,000 lari to pay because I crossed the road illegally. It's the AI street cameras she's worried about, a 5,000 Larry fine. By a quick reckoning, that's about 2,500 Canadian dollars for crossing the street illegally. Eight days later, Rustavelli Avenue, Tbilisi's main artery. It's the 17th of May 2025, officially called Family Purity Day. My name is Guy. I am part of one. of Georgian dream and also I'm Georgian men.

And we are celebrating this beautiful day of our life. Women and children and they love each other. They love each other. An organizer of the march is dressed in traditional robes. He looks as if he's just stepped out of a painting by the Georgian artist Pirozmani. From him we learn in the German, Russian that this festival was established by Ilya the Second, the patriarch of the Orthodox

Church, because traditional family values are, he says, in great danger. And he's prepared to fight to the end, he says, against those pseudo-liberals who desecrate the family and everything that is sacred. The purity procession has formed. right near the Kashaweti church, directly opposite the Parliament building. My name is Levann Mahashvili. I am a chair of the European Integration Committee of the Parliament of Georgia and we are in the central building and the only building of the Parliament of Georgia. It's taken us several months to get an interview with someone from the Georgian Dream Party,

but we're finally in the seat of power and getting an explanation. of this family purity day. The roots go back to 2014 with the request of the Orthodox Church. We have this as a national day. This is also the International Day against Homophobia. But this day was unfortunately used as a day or an opportunity to clash between these two groups.

Therefore, the country decided to impose this day as a day for the protecting or protection of family and respect to the parents. Outside, directly in front of the Parliament building, participants in the purity parade gather, as well as church and government representatives. Only 100 meters away, shielded from them by a police cordon,

a few dozen protesters stand with pro-European banners and photos of political prisoners. We think that the family days is every day, not only 17 May. This is Mariam, 26 years old. We know that the 26 October elections were rigged by this government. We think that we do deserve to being a part of Western European countries. So why our illegitimate government tries to be a part of Russia?

I don't get it. An ex-parliamentarian on the steps also cites. the stolen election of 2024. Before the vote, he reckoned Georgian Dream Support was only around 10 to 20%. Then, in his opinion, the party bought the votes. They pressured people, blackmailed officials working in educational networks,

kindergartens, and municipal institutions. We ask him, who is responsible for these criminal activities? He only answers the oligarch. Okay, so I'm Salome Joshi, I'm a documentary filmmaker living in Tennessee. We're watching scenes from Salome's film Taming the Garden. On the screen, there's a massive oak tree transported on a barge over the water. The film is about a hobby of a rich man, Bidina Ivanovichwili,

to uproot 100-year-old large trees from private yards or forests or villages and to bring them to his private garden through the Black Sea. Bidzina Ivanishvili, the oligarch. Bidzina Ivanovichwili would finance large theatres, an opera house. He would pay salaries of actors who were working there. He contributed to the construction of the big church that we have here in Tbilisi, Sameba. He was known for paying money for different things as a charity. But nobody had seen his picture. Not a single picture of him could be found online.

Nobody knew who he was or how he looked. Where is he? Who is he? He is really a godlike figure. His ideas or his vision were always particular, because he lives with isolated life. He is a narcissist, he's an egocentrics. And there was this story, like the village boy goes to Moscow in 90s and makes his life and makes his fortune and through computers.

And then in 2012, he created a political party called the Georgian Dream. He came to power with a diverse. He had brought together all the opposition people. He financed them. When his party came to power in 2012, he was a prime minister for one year, and then he resigned, and he said, I'm leaving politics. Since then, he has always been the shadow ruler of the country. He's evasive. He's elusive. He is the one who determines who should be the prime minister, who should be the ministers, what the policy should be. This is a political scientist, Pata Zacharylili,

whose party formed a coalition with Georgian Dream in 2012. Then, in 2016, Ivanish Lili brought a new team on board that was completely unknown until then, including the current Prime Minister, Iraqi-Kobakidze. For Pata, these newcomers were opportunists, who were only there to carry out the oligarchs orders and keep him in power. Since then, Ivanishvili uses Georgia as his private treasury, keeping his family and his fortune secure.

And the only country which supports him is, of course, Russia. So Ivanovil has a veil of this obscure stories around him. Half-rumors. Like, we know that he is an avid case. collector of art, he owns Damien Hirst, Jeff Coons, Picasso, etc. He also owns penguins, albino peacocks, he imports sharks. And ancient trees, which he takes a fancy to, in obscure Georgian villages. He pays for them, uproots them, and has them carried away. When I first saw a tree floating in the sea, that was when the first tree was being transplanted, transported.

It made me think of uprooting, obviously, of migration, of power. It made me think of masculinity as well. It struck me in spring last year. I am the tree. My ground is taken away from under my feet, and this has happened with the whole society. We thought we were standing on a solid ground, and then this powerful man comes with it.

its money. I felt uprooted. I said like, where's my ground? Where's my ground that I've been standing on all this time? So yeah, taking this tree, this spoke very much about being a refugee and trying to find your home or finding your home through the sea, find new home or shelter through the sea. But here, the sea did also have some kind of symbolic meaning. It was like crossing the sticks as going to the other side, to the other land, to the land, to the land. land of the dead. And the film ends with the park, which is a kind of a hell, but which is also a kind of a heaven. I'm Dato Sikharulidze. I'm professor in one of the Georgia's universities, but there used to be in a diplomatic service for 17 years. I was with the Shavardnazi

administration and Sakhashvili administration. At the Europe Day demonstration, we happened to meet David Sikhael Lidzzi. Minister of Defence under the previous government and now in the opposition to Georgian Dream. I consider that it has a state captured by a Russian oligarch and the part of the Russian hybrid war to derail countries from democratic development as well as from our European integration path.

One of the tactics of Kremlin to turn country into the kleptocratic authority which is naturally lied to the other kleptocratic authoritarianism. You know, against this kind of tactics, you are not protected by NATO. Attention should be paid to the hybrid warfare components, like what is happening here in Georgia. We have on the one hand the military occupation of part of Georgia, but on the other hand, hybrid infiltration into the Georgian institutions that is undermined. country and our sovereignty.

We walk past the long line of police. Many are wearing jeans and running shoes. Some have their arms around each other and are showing pictures on their mobile phones, all cool and relaxed. And we are laughing now, but we had a much worse days with the police. Today they behave more or less themselves, but we had the situations

when people, the demonstrators, have been terribly severely beaten, chasing, caught, and even robbed in the streets, taken their phones and wallets and everything, and they're thrown to jail. And we still have 53

political prisoners. This is a huge number for Georgia. One of these political prisoners is Georgi Tereshvili. We are at the hall of Goudani prison. This is the place where relatives can bring a parcel and food.

Today, his mother Marina is visiting him here in prison. She's 76 years old, small and frail, but tough, fighting tirelessly for her son's release. The prosecution accused Georgi of throwing dangerous objects at police during a protest rally. Marina says it was just a plastic bottle filled with water. Typically, he's charged with group violence, conspiracy, but none of the so-called co-conspirators had ever seen each other before the trial. Marina's personal story shows the entire history of Georgia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the 1992 Civil War, her 17-year-old son Mamuka was demonstrating for Georgian independence

when he was shot and killed by a sniper. For her, Georgian Dream oppresses young people and puts them behind bars. We now live in a police state in Georgia, says Marina. We met Marina in May, Since then, her son Georgi has been sentenced to two years in prison. Back with the pilgrims of family purity, they're waiting in Parliament Square for patriarch Ilya II and members of the government to turn up

so that the parade along Rustaveli Avenue can finally begin. The influence of the Georgian Orthodox Church is immense. It's incredibly wealthy and untouchable. You can't investigate what they do or what businesses they're involved in. In many ways, the oppressive mentality that Soviet ideology created in Georgians has now been taken over by the church. And it played an important role in getting Ivanovili to power. These people, this little group of people are traitors to their own race and their own nation. Participants passing by in the Family Purity Parade

hurl abuse at the small group of protesters on the steps of Parliament. They give the protesters the middle finger or shout threats at them. Some try to break through the police cordon to attack, but are pushed back by the police. Georgia won't surrender to any country. We don't want Europe, we don't want Russia, we don't want any country. and these people don't have the right to do demonstrations like this when they burn their own country

and in this country no LGBTQ demonstration will be made that's why our patriarch made this day what about gay and lesbian we don't like them we don't welcome them this is family gathering I will ask you one thing Yes.

If Georgia was gay LGBTQ society, would it win so many wars and last till today? Do you think so? Have you ever seen the war won by LGBT? Do you think that among soldiers are not gay? When you know, when Stalin came to the government in SSS, he said that LGBTQ people would destroy, the whole nation. That's why he prohibited their demonstrations. But we're saying that Hitler. Yes, this was the only thing that Hitler and Stalin agreed about.

History goes like this, that in the world, new Hitler will be born and new Stalin will be born, and there will be war again. I'm Georgi Kegovychuli. I am queer activists, co-founder of the equality movement, which is the LGBT rights organization in Georgia. 17th of May, 2013, Georgi Kikonyshvili and about 50 other activists were gathered in Liberty Square, the central square of Tbilisi. It was in those days known as the International Day Against Homophobia, now Family Purity Day. Georgian Orthodox Church, Georgian political groups and far-eyed groups, they mobilized the crowd of around 40,000 people. against us. Suddenly these people broke the barricades and they started to attack us.

It still remains a mystery for me how we survived actually. I clearly remember this huge tsunami running towards us. Homophobia generally was used from the Georgian Orthodox Church as a tool manipulating Georgian society because Georgian Orthodox Church is under a very big influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. They draw a picture of the West's and Western values, democracy, whatever, and they used homosexuality, as they say, something which is brought from the Western to Georgia. So that's how they try to mobilize the anti-democratic, anti-Western power in Georgia.

They brought this family values, something as a contrary to the homosexuality. to make this division within the society. And that's why they established this so-called family purity day on the 17th of May. The paradox here is at the Georgian Orthodox Church. I mean, the priests, a very big part of them are gayes. Which came as no surprise to him. The gay community, it's a very small community, you know. Everyone knows about each other.

Everyone knows, like, who's top, who's bottom, who is doing what? And there was also this big scandal a few years ago when one priest on a very high hierarchy in the Georgian Orthodox Church. He declared that the patriarchy himself is gay. This is a guy who is on top of the most homophobic institution in the country and he is gay. The law on family values and the protection of minors came into force in October 2024.

The MP from the Georgian Dream Party, Levan Machashvili, explains it to us. The main idea of this law is that the same-sex marriage is not allowed. We define marriage as a union between men and women, as it is actually in the Constitution. The promotion of this kind of... kind of ideology is not allowed. Advertisements near the schools is not allowed. This was also pre-election promise of this government. Georgian Dream Party is elected, then we are going to also adopt this kind of legislation. This is the relatively conservative ideology of this government,

reflected in the biggest amount of population in Georgia. This is our worldview, political worldview and societal worldview. If other political parties have different worldview, that's perfectly fine. Let them come. Let them say it loudly and win in the elections if they can. Sure. Let them win the elections if they can. But the opposition can't win. The October 24 parliamentary elections in Georgia were denounced by the European Union for being, and I'm quoting directly from the EU Parliament here, neither free nor fair, full of serious electoral violations, including intimidation, vote manipulation, interference with election observers and media,

and reported manipulation involving electronic voting machines. All of which illustrate the, quote, continued democratic backsliding of the country, for which the ruling Georgian Dream Party is fully responsible, unquote. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. Keeping on top of the incredible number of developments unleashed by the U.S. and Israel's attack on Iran can be tough. So if you want to know what's going on but feel overwhelmed by that prospect, I'm Jamie Poisson and I host the Daily News podcast, Frontburner. We're going to be covering this story all week, one story a day, great guests, clear information, lots of context.

Follow Frontburner wherever you get your podcasts. The former Soviet Republic of Georgia is a small, but, a telling example of the new wave of authoritarian regimes in Europe and elsewhere. What's happening there perfectly represents the Russian-inspired playbook which can be seen in larger countries. Excessive prison sentences, draconian laws, violent repression of protests and gender discrimination. Documentary producers Malgojad de Jervais and David Zain Myrovitz went to Georgia in May 2025.

It didn't take us long to see that the political situation in Georgia was dire. The filmmaker Salome Jashi summed it up for us. There is a monolithic structure where lower levels, so to say, obey higher levels. And if there is no obedience, there is a punishment. This is exactly the system that we have right now. If you don't obey the leader, even if you don't obey the government structures, violent government structures, you have no place here, you're excluded and you are punished. It is a revenge. The new laws that we're having right now, it makes the work of media impossible,

it makes the work of non-profits impossible, it makes the work of individuals, freelancers, impossible. So, I'm Doddy, Hargeli. My main source of income is digital communication. I'm also a trainer for NGOs and businesses in their digital marketing and online communications. All of my everyday life, everything I do is somehow connected with the protests which are happening in Georgia. I try to use my skills with the protest because I know tips and tricks on how to better get my message across online. and because I was also targeted by Georgian Dream and I got a lot of media attention at some point. My audience grew after coverage around me and my family,

and now I try to make lemonade out of that lemon and connects to as many people as I can. After we left Georgia, Dode kept us up to date with recorded messages from her phone. It's a big march today and I didn't expect this much people to come out because it's very, very hot in Tbilisi. And the campaign was not very big. I think approximately 20,000 people are out in the streets of Tbilisi now. It gives me so much hope.

I also am trying to post some things on. my Facebook account, I have 30,000 followers at this moment and I have a very big reach. My video views are more than 3 million. But for every demonstration of opposition, the ruling Georgian dream answers with a new repressive law. Salome Joshi. If we look at what's happening objectively, it's very dramatic, especially the new law on the grants, which means that if an organization or an individual or even a commercial entity receives a grant from outside the country, the government needs to approve this grant. And of course we know that the government will not approve all these grants.

And this is horrible because unlike most of European countries, there is no public funding here for independent activities. And so in order for us to operate, we need international funding. Last year, the government introduced the law on foreign agents, meaning non-profit organizations would need to register as a foreign agent. And then it was creating harsh conditions to NGOs, which are mostly run by women here. When you go out in the streets at the demonstrations, women are really on the front line. She's a mother of the Georgian Civil Society Foundation.

Go on. Civil Society. of civil rights. I'm Katie Kutsiswili. I'm the director of Civil Society Foundation in Georgia. We are helping NGOs, especially those who are fighting and protecting human rights. Another chance encounter on the pro-Europe march. We are threatened by a number of laws that have been approved by this parliament,

which we do not consider as legal. because it's a result of the falsified elections. They are passing like incredible number of laws, sometimes a few per day. It's against civil society, against freedom of expression, against freedom of speech, and they are trying everything to stop our activities

and either to put us all to prisons or to push us out of country. Unfortunately, it's the same playbook that Russia has been using against its civil society, that Belarus has been using, and sometimes even some of the countries in the European Union, like Hungary. So it could be said that this might be a very existential moment in the modern history of Georgia and contemporary history,

and if we lose this fight, tomorrow it can become Belarus. Ketty herself has been a target of Georgian dream. One morning, my niece is going out and I live in a kind of old Soviet building, just one of the apartments. She's coming back with like really big eyes and telling me, there are the posters with your pictures all around our house, the posters and inscriptions. Inscriptions were enemy of the state, enemy of the nation, and pictures were taken from our website. The neighbors were really upset with the government.

Russian neighbor of mine and she was screaming to them in Russian. You can't imagine what a good woman she is in Russian. Back to the family purity parade. The crowd is grown denser and the music from the loudspeaker louder than it was earlier this morning. Girls dressed in Georgian red, boys in traditional black costumes, older men in long religious robes, a real folk festival carried along by Georgian nationalism. In front of the steps of the Parliament building, a lady unexpectedly approaches our microphone.

She calls for the Georgian diaspora to return. turn home immediately, especially those living in Iran so that they can all build the country together. Some of the opposition people we spoke to claim that many in the purity parade are bust in from the provinces, given meals and pocket money by the church and government and told to chant anti-European Union slogans. Today, they had this demonstration of the family period today, so-called. Kiyogi Kikonisvili explains. And they brought like thousands of people, but what we

definitely know that those are not the people who came there by their will. Those are the people who are working in some states, institutions, in schools, teachers, whatever. Those are the people who the government ordered to come. This is not a celebration to me. For celebration, you don't need an order from government or from someone.

Tensions continue to rise between purity pilgrims on one side and liberal demonstrators on the other. We do expect the trouble because the few seconds ago, an old woman came here and asking policemen to take us from here because we were, You're ugly. We don't have a family, and we are not part of the Georgia. So you see what they are doing? They are just taking us pictures and videos. They are swearing us. We found this feeling of menace against the opposition everywhere. We are under threat. You can feel this threat, that someone is chasing you on the street. someone is like calling you in the middle of night and threatened you on phone.

Our guide, Tina Legitsi, is a known regime critic. Shortly before last year's elections, strange phone calls came in the middle of the night. It was like nightmare because the phone numbers is from Australia or Canada. They hired people all over the world like call centers. Others who spoke to received messages, threatening their children or themselves. After the elections, the anonymous calls stopped.

But then came the new tactic. Now opponents of the government are being put under financial pressure. Dodi Gacheli. After that, they decided to choke us with a very big fines, like 5,000 lorries. The Georgian Dream put this very very... very high-resolution cameras around the parliament and Rusta Valley Street. So when we're protesting and we are blocking the road, their AI recognition recognizes it and automatically fines us by $5,000.

$5,000 is so such a big amount of money for Georgia that people were afraid to come out. And the fine was 500 LARIS until December. but they made it 10 times bigger, so just to frighten us. A possible solution? Of course I'm wearing a mask. It's a very beautiful mask that I have. I just thought it because I used to wear this medical face mask, but it's very difficult to breathe.

And now I have a beautiful mask, a mask from Venice. Some people go without masks and they refuse to pay. the fine. The maximum they can do is just block all of your assets, but legally they can sell your stuff on an auction to accommodate their fine. Some people have accumulated like hundreds of thousands of lures and fines already. All of my friends have at least had one encounter with the judge and jurisdiction system. Most of my friends have been in jail. All the people who had never even crossed the street while it was read, now are criminals in the eyes of the regime. The Georgian dream parliamentarian has his explanation for these fines.

Well, there is a law, I believe everywhere else, that you should not block the roads, central laws. Fine generally is used to prevent similar behavior. If you have a fine, five larding. Okay, whatever. 5, 10, Larry, then it does not prevent you from doing something. Idea of the punishment, criminal or administrative, idea is to prevent similar behavior from happening again. So, you know, when it was 1,000 larry, they said it was draconian. When it became 5,000 larry, it's also draconian.

You name, I mean... What is medium salary in Georgia? 2,000 Lari. How much? 2,000 Lari, 2005 Lari. To summarize, average month, salary about $1,000 Canadian dollars and a fine for blocking the street about $2,500. By the way, as of May 2025, the wearing of masks in public is also forbidden.

In the middle of this chaos is veteran journalist Guram Raghava. One moment he's reporting live on air. The next he's crumpled on the floor, blood pouring from his face. So my name is Guram Ruggava. I work for a TV company Formula. I was reporting at night during eight hours. I was on live when it started. Protests started.

Yes, we are in front of Hotel Pili C Marriott now. This is the place where it happened. The police in a mask attacked me. without any reason. Coram Rogava, a former war reporter, is one of the most well-known TV journalists in Georgia. On the 29th of November 24, he was reporting from a mass demonstration on Rustavelli Avenue.

There was a lot of people showing them this sign, the open hands, like a symbol that they are unarmed, they are peaceful protesters. And I saw that one boy, We're coming like this, and for about 10 policemen on masks, they attacked him, they hit him. The protester was on the ground, and they beat him really hard. Gorham holds his camera in the middle of the action and comments for his television viewers.

There's a lot of police here. And look, it was like protesters are coming like this, showing the hands. Look, they are running to them. And I'm speaking like, look, look, look. One of the policemen approaches Guran from behind and hits him on the head and neck with gloves covering brass knuckles. So after that I was unconscious. Like, I lose my mind.

I fell down on the street there. And when I woke up, I was unblad. I had a lot of pain in my... had everywhere. I couldn't understand what happened because I don't remember that someone hit me. Doctors told me that it's miracle that I'm alive because it was very, very close to the nerve, which is responsible for hands, for legs, and I could lose my control on my body. For almost two and a half months, he was not allowed to move his head because his spine was at risk of extremely serious injury.

One question remains. Why was he beaten while he was live on television? They wanted to show to other journalists that if you try to broadcast the reality, we will try to kill you.

But there were security cameras outside the Marriott Hotel which should normally show where the attacker ran off to or whether he removed his face covering. I asked the camera footage, CCTV footage, and, you know, they took only this one, you know, CCTV video where I can see only my legs. There is no attack. They said that it was some technical problem during my attack. There is no

investigation for us in this country. It's almost six months after my attack. And you know what investigation did nothing. We actually spoke to three different TV journalists, all of whom were attacked while reporting live from demonstrations. One is the investigative

reporter Maka Shikladze. From her, we learn about the vigilantes called Tituski. They serve as an unofficial adjunct to the police now in Georgia. At first, they were thugs recruited from youth groups and street gangs. But now, according to Maka, they are former policemen or former military,

who have very special skills, including knowing exactly where to strike at people's necks. This is a video of the attack on Maka and her cameraman. She goes to help another demonstrator being beaten up. A Tituski, dressed in black and wearing a mask from the horror film's scream, approaches her from behind, twists her neck, and brutally throws her to the ground. To add insult to injury, the government attempts to say that Maka and her cameraman staged the attack themselves. But luckily, it was live on TV. The pro-Europe march is slowly approaching Europe Square in Tbilisi.

The crowd is chanting, Gaw Majos to victory. Graffiti with slogans, such as Fuck Russia or Fuck Putin, can be found everywhere in Tbilisi. So it means Georgia will not be no one's slave anymore. The majority of Georgians are clearly pro-Western,

shaped by painful memories of Russian invasions, as Tina Legitsi explains. We grow up on Russian cartoons, Russian movies, Russian literature. Really, half of our identity is like from Russian culture. And it's a tragedy when you're starting hating part of your identity. because for the last two centuries, they are suppressing our independence as a country.

They really surrounded themselves with Georgians to do everything behalf of Russia, because our government now is pro-Russian government. But of course, we get a different version from the Georgian Dream MP. This country is under a country. There is a Russian military, regular army, 30 kilometers from this point where we sit here, 30 kilometers from here, so within artillery shelling. But the occupation line goes 500 meters from the central highway. So it's immense, huge risks of military escalation.

I'm 37 years old. I've seen four wars, one civil war and three wars with Russia. And one civil war here in front of this building. So, and we have this memory, very tragic. memory. And we have seen this in 2008. That's why we said, look, we understand everything. We join wherever we can, but there are some limitations just to ensure that there is no war in this country. At the end of the family purity parade, the marchers converge at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, with high-ranking representatives of the Orthodox Church and politicians from the ruling Georgian

and Dream Party. Their speeches mix anti-European messages with Russian-tinged propaganda, disguised as a defense of traditional values, as a declaration of war against the supposed dark forces of a Western deep state. As our two authors marched at the pro-Europe demonstration, they had no idea that by participating in the protest march, they too were making themselves liable to prosecution. On the 29th of May 2025, the Polish and French embassies in Tbilisi warned on their websites that foreigners taking part in demonstrations in Georgia or reporting on the protests were deemed by the Georgian regime

to be committing a criminal offense and might not be allowed into the country in the future. And if the government had registered them somewhere, they could also face heavy fines. So what happens next in Georgia? And now the situation we are in right now, it's quite unique. I don't think we've experienced anything like this before. Because, first of all, the pressure that is coming from the side of the government is unprecedented. We have not experienced this in my lifetime. And second, it's very difficult to deal with this government.

There is no connection point. There is no way to speak. There is no meeting point. there is no reciprocity. There is no mutual understanding, if I can call it an understanding, which was not the case in previous times. Always there was some kind of connection. This is the 400th day of a non-stop protest against this authoritarian regime in Georgia.

They stole elections. They stole the constitution of Georgia. So you see people are out here. Oh, no. Everybody celebrating the New Year. They're exchanging gifts right now. So that's a sign of incredible resilience. The start of 2026 marked the 400th consecutive day of protests on Rustavelli Avenue

against the Georgian Dream government. The demonstrators' concrete demands are holding new elections and the release of political prisoners, including those jailed for protesting publicly. They're also calling for. for a full investigation in light of a BBC report on the regime's alleged use of World War I-era chemical agents against the protesters.

But with both the U.S. and the European Union, more or less abandoning Georgians to their fate, Georgian dream seems to have a free path to continue its Russian-style political repression. I was always thinking that maybe I could live abroad. Maybe I could just abandon everything and go somewhere because I know good enough English and good enough internet to work from anywhere and adjust myself to any place. This is my place. This is where I can make impact.

And wherever I go, I can never be happy if this country is not happy. I know that you are not Martin Luther King. If you can make a statement in the beginning, I have a dream. I have a dream. Oh, it's very hard. I have a dream to have Georgia without Georgian dream. which is not Georgian anymore, it's Russian. Shamedeghisturi, Rustaveli.

Next station, Rustavali. But hold, boom here to the novicekare. So clean all the door. Well, I'm 36 years old. I have seen three wars with Russia. My father died in a war with Russia when I was five years old. I have seen the civil war. And then out of this issue,

I have seen a beautiful Georgia, which is now thousands of times better than two years ago. This is a culture which can dance on its own pain, can dance on its own traumas, but still celebrates life. Shemdeghist Guri, how is the United States, Liberty Square. You've been listening to Dreaming Georgians versus Georgian dream by Malga Jardarvay and David Zayn Myerowitz. Sound engineer Ivo Olshevsky. This documentary was supported by the Pulitzer Center. It was also supported by the city of Gadsk, with the Gadensk Cultural Scholarship Mobility Fund. Lisa Ayuso is the web producer for ideas.

Technical production, Sam McNulty. Nicola Luxchich is this senior producer. The executive producer of ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.