Georgian Dream breaks silence by denying confederation plans with Abkhazia and South Ossetia

Georgian Dream has firmly denied claims they are considering forming a confederate state with Abkhazia and South Ossetia — after 50 days of avoiding the clarification.

On Sunday, Georgian Dream’s parliamentary leader, Mamuka Mdinaradze, voiced frustration at what he called ‘anti-national rumours’ about the alleged plan.

Taking his frustration to Facebook, Mdinaradze declared that ‘Georgia will never question its territorial integrity!’

‘No recognition or other anti-national issues are under discussion, including any agreement on a confederation!’, he added. 

Despite being firm in his dismissal of the rumours, it took Georgian Dream nearly seven weeks to publicly clarify their plans as part of pre-election promises. 

The suggestion that the ruling party considered this idea began after Georgian Dream released a statement on 20 August explaining their reasons for seeking a constitutional majority in this month’s elections, instead of the simple majority they claimed was the expected minimum outcome.

Their reasoning included a pledge to prosecute and ban key opposition groups, combat ‘pseudo-liberal ideology’ through homophobic constitutional changes, and an aborted proposal to make Orthodox Christianity the state religion, 

Another ambiguous promise was to amend the constitution ‘to align Georgia’s governance and territorial structure with the new reality […] in a peaceful way’. Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili repeated this proposal in similarly vague terms during several campaign speeches. 

In a 14 September speech in Gori, a central Georgian town that was bombed and briefly occupied by Russian forces during the 2008 August War, Ivanishvili doubled down on claims that unspecified global powers and their local representatives in Georgia — the Georgian government led then by United National Movement (UNM) — were to blame for the war. 

Ivanishvili expressed confidence that Georgians would ‘find the strength […] to apologise for the fact’ that UNM ‘engulfed our Ossetian brothers and sisters in flames in 2008’ and promised a ‘Nuremberg process’ for the former ruling party, who he described as ‘war criminals’.

[Read more: Georgian Dream accuses former government of ‘provoking’ 2008 War] 

Since 20 August, the party had refused to clarify its stance on unity with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, despite immediate and strong criticism from domestic opponents. 

A number of critics argued that Georgian Dream was considering a confederation with the regions through recognising their independence as a precursor. These allegations only grew more intense following Ivanishvili’s controversial speech in Gori which was widely seen as him placing blame on Georgia, rather than Russia, for the August War. 

Relatives of Georgian soldiers who perished in the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the early 1990s and in the August War have also strongly chastised the proposal to apologise. The backlash was largely met with silence from Georgian Dream, which is seeking to secure its fourth consecutive victory in the upcoming parliamentary vote on 26 October.

Georgian Dream has continued to grapple with domestic backlash, further compounded by sceptical reactions and demands for additional steps to prove they were serious about rapproachment with them from the authorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as statements from Russian officials.

These included the First Deputy Chair of the Russian State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration, and Relations with Compatriots, Konstantin Zatulin, who on 30 September claimed that Abkhazia and South Ossetia ‘rejoining Georgia’ was ‘long off the table’. 

Zatulin was reacting to Georgian Dream Secretary General Kakha Kaladze’s suggestion that a concrete step Russia could do to help Georgia to normalise relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia was to withdraw its military forces from those regions. 

[Read more: Russia offers to help Georgia ‘normalise relations’ with Abkhazia and South Ossetia]

Despite Mamuka Mdinaradze’s recent dismissal of their alleged confederation plans, the ruling party has yet to clarify the specific ‘constitutional changes’ they have campaigned on since August to address Georgia’s ‘territorial integrity’.

For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.