If we connected the latest news about Georgia and were passionate about NATO, like some dancing around Sabin Etxe, we could easily say that the Georgian Dream (GD) government party is a Russian party that represses European fans. In fact, this year the DFG has supported a bill that makes it available to the NGO for any organization receiving more than 20% of foreign funds to be registered as a foreign agent.

Georgian NGOs are funded almost 100% by the West and have great power: they train officials and judges, they colonise universities and participate in the legislative and political process. They are powerful and, therefore, the bill has finally been paralysed by protests and pressure from Western countries. But it is not enough, as Francis Fukuyama and Nino Evgenidz say in the journal Foreign Affairs; Georgian Russia is winning thanks to the GD and this party, in the words of Andoni Ortuzar, “has a relationship” with the nationalists.

When in September 2018 the representatives of the GD participated in the Alderdi Eguna of the PNV were already in the spotlight of the Atlantic hawks. In 2019 there was Irakli Kobakhidze, leader of the party, and the following year, two days before the elections to the Basque Parliament, the PNV published a video in which Kobakhidz supported Basque nationalists. Since then, the relationship between the two parties has been deepening, at the same rate as the IP’s relations with the Atlantis.

In 2022, the EU granted Ukraine and Moldova candidate status while unfairly rejecting Georgia, although the Caucasian country was the best prepared among the three. The problem was not the suitability of the candidate, but the political action of the Georgian Government. Since the arrival of the DG to the government, the road to peace has prevailed to resolve the country’s secessionist problems and its conflict with Moscow. This has strengthened economic relations between Russia and Georgia, so Tbilis, despite condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, refuses to impose sanctions on Russia. This helps to understand why US ambassadors are in a permanent confrontation between Georgia and Kobakhidze. However, in January 2023 GD leader travelled to Euskal Herria to collect the Sabino Arana Foundation Award.

If we were to use the binarist logic used by other nationalists to stigmatise other people or institutions when they talk about Ukraine, we could safely say that in a soft version the PNV is a useful fool of Putin or, in the harshest version, a Putin agent who helps validate the GD in the West. But we are not fellas NAFO.

The GD has a great ideological similarity with the PNV, which is formally presented as a center-left party, but in practice it is neoliberal and intends to attract voters of different political sensitivities through the populist technocratic discourse. Peace, stability, economic development and European integration are the main axes of your speech, but in order to achieve them it is necessary to protect a little the Georgian national interest, which provokes anger in the West. The conclusion is that the media have stigmatised the party as a Russian fan through simplifications and major propaganda campaigns. But be quiet, NATO supporters of the PNV, if you don’t attend to Atlantic propaganda you will understand that the PNV is not at the service of Putin and that it has no Russian friends in Georgia.