Georgian Orthodoxy and East-West Intrigues

https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Conflicts-and-alleged-poisonings:-the-internal-war-in-Georgian-Church-58834.html

The sources cited here are not above scrutiny, but given the history of the Orthodox world, and the present tensions within Georgia and the Caucasus in general, the intrigues and attempted assassinations are not altogether surprising. In fact the Georgian Orthodox Church had a similar incident in 2017.

The tensions over Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain an open wound for Georgian society and the country is torn apart by factions – some leaning toward the West and aspiring to join the EU and NATO, and the others who out of more conservative impulses wish to resist the West and fear being used by it. Not only do they not want to see Western pop culture and liberal values overtake their country, they don't want Georgia to become a frontline state in a new war. This party is labeled as pro-Russian and that may be true in some cases but largely I think a neutrality or a triangulation posture would be a more accurate description.

All of these tensions have been exacerbated by the situations in Armenia and Ukraine and refugees from both Russia and Ukraine have ended up in Georgia. These struggles are playing out in terms of politics, the Church, and even on the street as reporters have written about the battles of street graffiti and the like. The West takes all of these stories whether about Georgia, Armenia, Slovakia, or Hungary and spins them into anti-Putin tirades. One is also left wondering if (what are in the end) medical issues are being spun into conspiratorial poison plots. I cannot say but it has crossed my mind.

Others like former president Mikheil Saakashvili make similar claims but he is not credible and is demonstrably an agent (or former agent) of Western interests.

Of the three Caucasian states, Azerbaijan has moved closest to the West and yet the ties aren't overtly strategic. No one is talking about bringing Baku into the EU or NATO. It's a business arrangement. That said, Israel has quietly turned it into a military one – much to the ire of Iran which has historical ties and interests to the country. This threat to Tehran is almost never spoken of in Western media.

Armenia has since independence maintained close ties with Russia and Iran but it too is a state of upheaval over East-West divides and internal political upheaval in part due to the country's major defeat in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Georgia is on the Black Sea and some of its minority populations overlap with neighbouring Turkey. There are also Chechen connections that were (at one time) utilised by the West as the Americans provided support for the rebels across the border in the Russian Republic.

Georgia and Armenia are buffer states. Azerbaijan is too – but of a different nature and again there's been no talk of Western membership(s) as the geography (at present) doesn't work out. Azerbaijan only borders Russia and Iran, unlike Georgia and Armenia which border either Turkey, the Black Sea or both.

The rationales for Russia's invasion of Ukraine in both 2014 and 2022 more or less overlap with the Georgian situation. If Georgia moves into the Western column the buffer is removed and it would represent a strategic threat to Moscow. However a war in Georgia carries its own set of risks but you can be sure the strategists in Washington pay them little mind.

And don't think for a moment that Washington is not playing its part in these ecclesiastical intrigues. The United States has a long record of wading into international ecclesiastical intrigues and plots.