Georgia, and the propaganda machine

 

“They destroyed my family home. They made us homeless. My Dad lost his job and his business, and I lost my childhood. I cannot forgive them for this. I hate all Russians.” says Anna, not a Ukrainian but a 22-year-old Georgian as she relives just 14 years ago in 2008, when her own home was destroyed by a Russian invasion.

And that hatred and anxiety of Russian people is common here in Georgia, not just where I am in Tbilisi, but all over the country. 20 percent of Georgian territory is still occupied by Russians, and who knows when Putin could return to claim the rest? It is a real fear for the people and is increasing all the time with the growing numbers of (though anti-Putin) Russians fleeing into the country. 40,000 have crossed the border so far, and the numbers keep on coming. House rental prices have tripled in the space of 6 weeks and Georgian people are getting worried and angry and in some small cases are lashing out. Many homeowners and letting agents have refused to let in Russians. Some bars have signs saying “Russians go home!” Many Russians here are telling me they don’t feel welcome. And the times are very tense.

 

Everywhere you look you can see Ukrainian flags. Yellow and blue curtained all across the buildings and the windows and lit up in the electric statues and towers in the hills over the city. There is similar support in Finland and Estonia, other countries that border Russian territory, in Tallinn in Estonia the whole street of the Russian embassy is covered with anti-Putin signs and slogans and the Ukrainian colours, but that furious sentiment seems even stronger here. But the country is split 50-50, as it is almost everywhere now, between young and old, informed and ill-informed, and at present, though almost the whole country are against the war, there is currently a pro-Russian government in place.

 

And unbelievably, even here outside of Russia, there are still those gullible enough to believe in the propaganda and conspiracy theories that Putin’s machine are vomiting out. It’s hard to understand how people can believe it. It’s like a parody of itself. “Russians torturing and killing people in Bucha?! It’s fake news! It was the British! They put the bodies there in a psychological operation. They drove over in cars.” But still, the propaganda machine has got people digesting it. One Russian man I spoke to here says “It’s like my grandparents are on a different planet. I always thought propaganda had to be clever to be believed, but it doesn’t at all. In fact, the more stupid it is, the more it is working.”

 

 

In 2008 Putin’s armies marched into Georgia, a democratic, sovereign nation, took territory, then simply turned back for home leaving some of his armies still inside. Georgia got off relatively lightly. Imagine, if you will, the most vile, depraved, and brutally horrific things a human being can possibly do to another human being, and Russia and Russians are doing it now. It is sick and disgusting and horrifying and they are currently ticking their way through almost every line in the war crime book.

 

In the 2020 Belarus protests against their dictator, Lukashenko- the prime minister and Putin’s favourite puppet- tens of thousands of people were tortured in ways that made many medieval torture techniques look like child’s play. That is what we are starting to hear coming out now from Ukraine. And it will not stop, till Putin get’s what he wants, whatever that is. Every country needs to stop buying Russian oil and gas, and hope the sanctions will take affect sooner or later. And that the Russian people inside Russia will wake up and rise up and finish him.