[Club Music] HOST (VICTOR SWEZEY) The clock just struck midnight, which means, technically, it’s election day. I’m making a podcast. GROUP OF WOMEN AT THE CLUB Ah, Keto! Podcasti! Oh my God! Podcasti! HOST My name is Victor Swezey. I’m a journalist, and at this point, I’ve been in Tbilisi, Georgia, for about a month. Okay. WOMAN 2 AT CLUB Okay. Uh, like 15 minutes ago we were talking about how we wanted to have our own podcast about politics and… (HOST: Oh, really?) this guy showed up. HOST I’m on the patio at Left Bank, a techno club in a crumbling industrial park from the Soviet era next to the river that runs through the capital. There’s a giant cactus looming over the outdoor dance floor. Lit up by colorful spotlights. An eye-wateringly strong Georgian brandy called chacha is flowing freely. But everyone here seems tense. They’re about to decide their future. CLUB PATRON #1 Okay, I’m very nervous. Uh, I think we’re all very nervous, no? (Yeah.) Yeah, but I think we just have a faith that it will all go into our direction that we want, which is, like, of course a European future, and a good one, yeah. CLUB PATRON #2 Fuck Russia! CLUB PATRON #3 I’m fucking afraid. I'm really afraid. HOST It’s October 2024 — a critical moment for a small country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. In the parliamentary election tomorrow morning, Georgians will choose between Russia and the European Union. Between the stability offered by closer ties with Vladimir Putin and the promises of democracy, free expression, and free movement in the EU. Young Georgians have spent months protesting, canvassing, posting Instagram stories and facing down tear gas. Now the election feels like a culmination, and the future seems to hang in the balance. But how did it come to this? How did a country where nearly 80% of the population wants to join the EU, end up teetering on the edge of becoming a Russian satellite? You’re listening to “The Land in Between,” a five-part podcast about a pivotal moment in one country’s history. And what it tells us about the future of our world order. This is episode 1: “Decision”. Okay, umm we’re on the LOT Airlines flight, about to land in Tbilisi. I’m really excited. What brought me to Georgia? I was asked that question a lot during the year I spent in the country. I’m from Los Angeles. I have no family ties to Georgia, and I had never been anywhere in the post-Soviet world before the fall of 2024, when I touched down at Tbilisi International Airport. I was a few months out of college, with a profound sense that the world was changing, that the reality I grew up with was on its way out, and something new and as yet undefined was taking its place. NEWSREADER 1 Voters in 27 countries have elected more far-right members to the European Parliament… NEWSREADER 2 Dawn over Lviv… [siren sound]... And the biggest Russian attack on civilian infrastructure this year begins [car sound]. NEWSREADER 3 Shots have rung out at a rally where President Trump was addressing the crowd… HOST Authoritarian leaders gaining ground. Empires flexing their power. These things happened in Georgia way before they happened anywhere in the West. So you’re gonna have to forgive me if this feels like a geography lesson. But it’s really important. Georgians call their country the center of the world. To the west is the Black Sea, and then Eastern Europe. To the north are the Caucasus Mountains, and then Russia. To the south and east are Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. But Georgians aren’t like any of their neighbors. Their language is not related to any other in the world. And they have this unique set of stories about where they came from. Like this one: JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS MOVIE Jason and the Argonauts… I have heard there is a tree at the end of the world, with a fleece of gold hanging in its branches. HOST According to the legend, a kingdom on Georgia’s Black Sea coast was the home of the Golden Fleece and the sorceress Medea. And Georgia was one of the world’s first Christian countries. [Singing in Georgian] For centuries, one great empire after another swept through Georgians’ land and ruled over them: Persia, the Mongols, the Ottomans, and most recently the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. But Georgians always found a way to survive, to preserve their culture. During the Soviet era, they were even in charge for a little while. NEWSREADER The birthplace of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who is responsible for the deaths of an estimated 30 million people… HOST When the USSR collapsed in 1991 and Georgia gained its independence, Georgians were left to figure out their future. And thinking about those legends, and those empires, they decided their place was in the European Union. ZURAB ZHVANIA (IN 1999) in NEWS CLIP I am Georgian, and therefore I am European. NEWSREADER Georgians have been waiting for a long time for official recognition that they can be a part of Europe. Now they have something to celebrate. SPEAKER 1 in NEWS CLIP That’s probably my dream — to see Georgia as part of European family. HOST For two decades, joining the EU became a consensus in Georgia. More than 80% of the population supported it. So did politicians from every major party. The EU took on this almost mythical status — it was a way to redeem Georgia’s past and guarantee progress in the future. But then something started changing. Or really, it was someone. [Flamingo sounds] HOST Those are flamingos — they are definitely not native to Georgia. They live here — on a manmade lake in a public park on the coast of the Black Sea. All around the lake — along a maze of winding paths — are over 200 giant trees. [Footsteps] Platinus orientalis. Gingko biloba. They come from all over the country, and all over the world. And they all belong to one man. NEWSREADER 1 The oligarch Bidzina… NEWSREADER 2 Bidzina… NEWSREADER 3 Bidzina Ivanishvili… NEWSREADER 4 Is Georgia’s richest man and the most powerful figure in the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party. HOST For almost a decade and a half, Bidzina Ivanishvili has led Georgian Dream, the ruling party here, from behind the scenes. His wealth has been estimated anywhere between $2.7 and $7.5 billion — that’s almost a quarter of Georgia’s entire economy. His holdings include a real estate empire, a major bank, a web of offshore investment accounts. He looks down on Tbilisi from a glass palace, with its own indoor shark tank — it’s straight out of a Bond movie SALOME JASHI There was a talk that he owned penguins, sharks… HOST This is Salome Jashi, one of Georgia’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers. SALOME that he collected, collects still, expensive pieces of art. That he owns an albino peacock. So there was all these talks about him. HOST Lately he’s been obsessed with this one hobby in particular. SALOME The desire to own nature. The desire to own trees. HOST Jashi remembers how it all began. SALOME We — like the whole nation — we watched the transplantation of the first tree. By transplantation I mean it's already dug out. It's lying on two flatbeds. It's sliding on the land, and then it swims in the sea. I was like, shit. This is a beautiful image. This is, like, incredible, it’s mesmerizing. HOST Jashi began following Bidzina’s trees. Some came from abroad, but most were uprooted from little villages along the coast. She captured hours and hours of surreal footage: trees floating on rafts, sitting upright in the back of a truck swaying in the dark. People lining up on the highway to watch their trees roll out of town. SALOME This one woman was saying that she was not happy that her tree was being cut down. And I said, like, “You can say no, it's your tree. I mean, you can always say no.” And then I remember her answer very vividly. She said, “Who am I in comparison to him?” HOST Five years after she watched Bidzina take that first tree, Jashi released her film. It’s a documentary called “Taming.” In Georgian, the word is “Motvinyereba.” SALOME It has this dual meaning of violence and tenderness. They were both violent with the use of the machinery. With its sound, it was violent, but also the idea of taking the tree intact — exhibition of tenderness, so to say. And the desire to collect nature, there is something violent and tender in it. HOST Violence and tenderness. Jashi says these are tools for taming not only a garden, but a country. SALOME I mean what we witnessed in the story of the trees in the film or outside the film, it is now implemented in Georgia on a wider scale. GIORGI BADRIDZE He called his coalition the Georgian Dream, and it actually emerged into an oligarch's dream. HOST This is Giorgi Badridze. He’s a senior fellow at the Rondeli Foundation, one of the most prestigious think tanks in Georgia. He was also the country’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. GIORGI He basically managed to treat this country as his private property basically. He believes he has privatized the country. In more politically correct terms, it's called the “state capture.” HOST Bidzina has taken over media outlets, he’s appointed loyalists as judges, he staffed the government with his own longtime allies and business associates. But Badrize says he still has one major obstacle in his way: the European Union. GIORGI He believed that European-style democratic reforms are in direct conflict with his ability to keep control over the state institutions, branches of power, and basically it's in conflict with the interest of oligarchy. HOST I wanted to understand why being the richest man in Georgia wasn’t enough for Bidzina — why he had to take over the country, too. So I called someone who knows him personally. HELENA BEDWELL Hello. HOST Hey Helena, how’s it going? HELENA Good, good, good — how are you? I’m in my car, but that’s fine [laughs]. HOST This is Helena Bedwell. Her cars are iconic. When I first met her, she drove a little Chinese EV in a vivid shade of lilac. Now, it’s a bright yellow Smart Car. They really go with her look: bombastic blazers and cardigans, dangly jewelry, a toy poodle. I drive a baby blue Fiat 500, so naturally, we were fast friends. HELENA Victor, you are one of the newcomer babies I took care of [laughs]. And sort of like showed you around, which I'm I actually love helping, obviously, younger generation too — especially such complex area as Georgia and the Caucasus. HOST Helena has been reporting from Georgia almost as long as Georgia has been an independent country. She spent the last decade and a half as Bloomberg’s correspondent here in Tbilisi. So tell me about, sort of what your first impressions of Bidzina were before he entered politics. HELENA Bidzina Ivanishvili was always to not just to me, but to the population of Georgia and everyone was always a mystic figure who nobody ever seen his picture, let alone physically. I actually nicknamed him “gruff Monte Cristo” because he lived in this sort of isolated lifestyle, and there was just all this sort of like unknown things about him. If he stayed as an isolated, eccentric billionaire, it would be maybe kind of even cute, you know? Yeah, who cares? He just lives uphill, looks after his animals — big deal. HOST What do you think drove him to go from being this cryptic, hidden figure to entering politics and, you know, launching the Georgian Dream party? What was that vision of Georgia that he wanted to impose? HELENA His motivation for me, for sure, was the 2008 war. I think it really affected him. It really did affect him. HOST To understand what’s happening in Georgia today, you have to understand what Vladimir Putin did here in 2008. He wanted to expand Russia’s influence in its former backyard. And ethnic conflicts that had broken out during Georgia’s independence provided a perfect opportunity. Two parts of the country — Abkhazia and South Ossetia — had become breakaway states. They were legally part of Georgia but not under its control. In the summer of 2008, after months of escalating tensions, Georgia launched a military operation to take back one of these regions. NEWSREADER 1 A fierce battle broke out today on the fringe of the former Soviet Union. NEWSREADER 2 The flare ups the worst fighting in years between the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and the breakaway region called South Ossetia. HOST Claiming he was protecting the ethnic Ossetians, Putin sent troops over the border. NEWSREADER 1 Columns of Russian tanks and troops rolled into the American-backed former Soviet republic of Georgia today after a nighttime barrage of artillery fire and rockets. HOST And they didn’t stop in South Ossetia. NEWSREADER 2 NATO is calling for a halt of fighting in Georgia’s South Ossetia region. NEWSREADER 3 Apartment blocks were left burning. Survivors lay bloodied, squatting in the rubble of their destroyed homes. NEWSREADER 4 Smoke rises above the Georgian city of Gori. For it is these men, Russian soldiers, who are firmly in control of the town. HOST Tens of thousands of people had to leave their homes. For a few days, it wasn’t clear whether or not the capital, Tbilisi, would fall too. The war was over in less than a week, and Russia pulled back to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two breakaway states. It still occupies them — about 20 percent of the entire country — to this day. For Georgians like Bidzina who do not want to anger Russia, this is a big reason why. HELENA I think he thought that this war is going to possibly repeat again. And possibly he thought that it will be the end of himself as well. That Russian expansion could spread — sort of seriously spread. He's not politician, you see. He hates politics. He hates being out there in power. He hates Being, you know, in public and something, he thought that I will do this, and then I will retire and, sort of like, I will stand back and see what happens. But did not go as planned, because he's a disappointed savior. He got very disappointed, because things did not go how he planned. He's just an emotional billionaire who thinks that Georgia should stay quiet. HOST Do you remember the first time you met Bidzina? HELENA The first time I met him in 2011, I think he was just beginning his political fight. ​​That was our first interview at his, as I call it, Dr Evil's residence, type building in the central of Tbilisi. The second interview we had, which was in his seaside residence. And he turned up at the interview with his golf cart in front of his waterfall with his dog, feeding zebras, lemurs… He did not like that interview either because he showed us his animals, his zebra, his lemurs and something, and when article was written, he got angry. He said, “Why did you mention my animals?” And I told him, I said, “Well, why did you show us?” HOST Helena was not very impressed by either interview. HELENA He left this feeling that he did not really know what was going on outside. Because he spent his entire life, meaning like 10 years or more in Georgia, in total isolation. I really had feeling that he was really sort of wrong about many things, like Georgia's global role — he really saw Georgia as a small country that did not matter. That really broke my heart. You know, Georgia is not a small place that does not matter. It does matter. HOST I agree with Helena. Georgia does matter. But when I arrived here, the reason why seemed uncertain. Was it a triumph of liberal democracy — proof that a little nation on the edge of Europe can join the EU if its people want it badly enough? Or was it just the opposite — a step toward Russia rebuilding its old empire? That’s what was on the line in the parliamentary election I told you about at the beginning of the episode. And just before the vote — on a night in late October — was the first time I saw him. The shark-owning, tree-collecting oligarch himself — Bidzina. [Georgian Dream rally music] It’s the last major rally for his Georgian Dream party. HOST There’s this giant roundabout at the center of Tbilisi — today, it’s blocked from all sides. Buses arrive all afternoon, bringing in thousands of people from the countryside. In the corner, there’s a band playing cheesy pop covers. They do that thing where they pause during the chorus, you know? For the crowd to sing along. [Pop song playing at Georgian Dream rally] Or not. Most people don’t look too enthusiastic — if I’m to believe what I’ve been told, they’re being paid to be here — a lot of young guys in tracksuits and gruff-looking men in old winter coats. They’re standing around chatting, smoking cigarettes, or scrolling on their phones. I want to interview people at the rally, but it’s hard to find someone who speaks English. At one point, a woman comes up to me and grabs my mic, pulls me close to her, and spends a couple minutes monologuing in Georgian. GEORGIAN DREAM SUPPORTER [translated from Georgian] I hope that Bidzina Ivanishvili will again lead our country, our Georgian people, and will fulfill all the promises that he promised the people even better, ten times and a hundred times more. HOST The sun goes down and the leaders of Georgian Dream take the stage, one after another, in order of increasing importance — like the undercards at a boxing match ahead of the main event. [Mayor giving speech in Georgian] HOST There’s the flamboyant mayor of Tbilisi. He’s a former soccer star known online for his alleged extramarital affairs. [Prime minister giving speech in Georgian] And the baby-faced prime minister, a loyal footsoldier for the party’s agenda. And finally, alone on the opposite side of the stage, covered by his own private shield of bulletproof glass, is the oligarch himself. [MC introduces Bidzina in Georgian] He’s a wiry, healthy-looking man in his late 60s, with a pointed face and a white stripe through his dark hair like a badger. [Bidzina giving speech in Georgian] A core group of supporters at the front hang on his every word. Everybody else looks bored. But this crowd is in for a treat. Onto the stage struts a man in his late twenties, dressed in a letterman jacket and flat-brimmed baseball cap. This is Bera, one of Bidzina’s two pale-white sons. By a genetic roll of the dice, they were both born with albinism. But only Bera is a rapper. [Georgian Dream song performed at rally] Bera spent years jet-setting around the world, posing shirtless with a menagerie of exotic animals. For a while, he also appeared strangely often in photos with the actress Zendaya. Bidzina’s entire political party is named after this song. But that’s all the sideshow — the bread and circuses. What’s important is the election. And the lengths that this oligarch is willing to go to make sure he wins it. That’s coming up on the next episode. MARIAM NIKURADZE The thing is that the elections are rigged way before the election here, right? GIORGI GAKHARIA Violence is a fact. There was a physical attack on several of our members and leaders. NEWS CLIP [Shouting at polling station amid election chaos] HOST Do you think there’s any chance that the opposition could win more than 50 percent of the vote? BEKA ODISHARIA It is absolutely impossible. It is zero chance. HOST “The Land in Between” was produced, reported, and written by me, Victor Swezey. It’s a production of the Global Reporting Centre. Our editors were Andrea Crossan and Britney Dennison. Music by Irakli Margishvili. Translator and production assistant: Sandro Gudiashvili. Fact-checking by Sharon Nadeem. Digital support by Andrew Munroe. Credit song is Mdevari, by Skazz. Art by Mariam Katcharava. Special thanks to the Soviet Past Research Laboratory and the Fulbright Program for making this project possible.