“Georgia’s total dependence on Russian tourists is an act of sabotage by the ‘Kotsis’ [Georgian Dream], and the fact that I am being blamed for this is the result of deliberate malice. This is utter nonsense! After 2008, my policy was built on granting Russian tourists limited entry under strict control,” Mikheil Saakashvili, the imprisoned third president of Georgia, wrote on his social media accounts.
According to the politician, he assigned a strategic political function to admitting Russian tourists. Furthermore, the former president claims, in 2012 the share of tourists from the Russian Federation accounted for less than 20% of the total influx.
“I assigned this primarily a political purpose: so that, against the backdrop of virulent anti-Georgian propaganda, visiting Russians would take home the truth about the success of Georgian reforms.
Our Russian-language television channel, the First Caucasian Information Channel (PIK), served this very same goal, and I want to say that we achieved great success in that direction: Russian propagandists and the authorities, represented by Medvedev, were forced to make excuses as to why Russia lacked such uncorrupted police and such rapid development as Georgia.
At the same time, we were rapidly developing tourism from the rest of the world, primarily from Europe and America. The numbers prove this: in 2012, visitors from Russia accounted for less than 20% of the total number of tourists.”
According to Saakashvili, achieving this balance was possible “thanks to the extremely positive image of our country and—without being overly modest here—my own personal standing.” The former president noted that the news of Georgia’s reforms was disseminated across the globe by the US president, secretaries of state, European leaders, prominent business figures including Donald Trump, and the international press itself.
“We advertised our country on leading television networks—CNN, BBC, and others. We concluded an agreement with Royal Caribbean cruise lines to bring one million American tourists a year to Batumi on liners sailing the Istanbul–Batumi–Odesa route.
We were creating a unique tourism product geared primarily toward Western consumers. A vital element of our exclusive niche was to be Tetnuldi—one of the largest ski resorts in Europe—which was to be reached via a tunnel bored through Lechkhumi from Kutaisi Airport, an airport we built exclusively for European destinations. Our modernist architectural projects were also designed with Western tourists in mind.”
In turn, according to Saakashvili, Georgian Dream derailed many of these initiatives: the contract with Royal Caribbean, the construction of the Tetnuldi resort, and advertising on Western television networks. According to the former president, the current authorities have buried the reforms, destroyed the country’s positive image, and “reoriented Kutaisi Airport predominantly toward Russia.”
“We have been tethered to Russia not only in terms of tourism, but through the entire economy. What the so-called prime minister of the dictatorship claims—that tourism will collapse if Russians stop coming—is only part of it. To this must be added that logistics, trade, and energy will completely collapse if one fine day the Russians decide to halt supplies of their already expensive electricity to us, or cut off the re-export of automobiles through Georgia. Under my economic policy, such a situation would have been utterly impossible.”
