Anti-government protests in the South Caucasus republic of Georgia have become a feature of daily life for nearly two months now. Demonstrators have taken to the streets of the capital, Tbilisi, as well as more than 30 other towns and villages across the country with regularity, calling for new elections in the wake of the November 28 halting of Georgia-EU accession talks. More than 400 people have been arrested to date, while incidents of targeted violence against opposition leaders continue to escalate.

While the fate of the nation will likely be ultimately decided in the capital, the demonstrations in the country’s regions may prove crucial in sapping the government’s strength and diffusing its repressive potential.

The central Georgian town of Khashuri is notable mostly for one thing: the presence of the country’s main east-west highway, which until recently — when a massive Chinese-backed infrastructure project rerouted it further north — ran through its centre. Otherwise largely unremarkable, Khashuri is almost a byword in Georgia for a sleepy provincial city where little happens, least of all politics.

That is no longer true. Over the past two months, a group of protesters has gathered regularly at the town’s central park, brandishing EU and Georgian flags as they echo the calls across the country for the Georgian Dream government to host new, internationally coordinated elections. 

“We are out here not only because the government suspended EU talks, but because of the level of violence the police have used in Tbilisi,” says Lana Chelashvili, a translator and Khashuri native. She is one of two dozen locals that have braved the intense cold to appear at the park, sipping tea from a thermos in an attempt to stay warm.

“The security forces are arresting people at random in Tbilisi,” Chelashvili says. “I know one person who was beaten so badly his jaw was broken — they just threw him in the back of the police van and beat him as hard as they could. The courts are charging young people with everything they can think of, but there has not been one investigation against these security forces who are exceeding their rights.”

At the edge of the gathering, three policemen watch the demonstrators silently from outside their squad car. While there’s no risk of violence from them here — they are as local as the protesters are, and in a small city like Khashuri, all know each other well — that might not be the case if they are deployed to the capital.

Keeping the police here, through consistent gatherings, is a key goal of the core group that meets in Khashuri’s central park almost every day.

“I am 25 years old, and this is the first time I can remember anything like this ever happening in Khashuri in my life,” says Luka Kaulashvili, a student and regular attendee of the town’s first-ever protest movement. “That is already a major achievement. The second most important thing is to keep the protests going, whether we are 1,000 people like it was in the first days here or just ten or fifteen people.”

Kaulashvili gestures to the handful of police nearby. “You can see that there is just one official car here now, but there are many, many police cars in the city,” he says. 

“The [Georgian] secret service is always watching us, and if we will not come out [to demonstrate] in Khashuri, they will transfer these units to Tbilisi. If that happens everywhere, the riot police and security forces in Tbilisi will be much stronger. So it is very important to us to decentralise and spread their forces, because [the government] doesn’t have enough resources to keep us at bay in every town, in every village,” Kaulashvili says.

That is the main reason why Kaulashvili, who attends university in the capital, returned to his hometown to bolster the protest numbers there. His mother is also present, while his sister — also a student — is taking part in Tbilisi.

“In the first days [of the protests], there were well over a thousand people here, which was an incredible amount, something I couldn’t believe,” Kaulashvili says. “Then the government began to intimidate people — they told them they would lose their jobs, not receive salaries if they continued to protest. The mayor himself was involved in this, but they have not been able to break everyone.” 

Other successful anti-government movements have shown the importance of a diffuse movement across more than just a country’s major urban centres.

Perhaps the most salient comparison is one that has been made many times already with regards to Georgia: Ukraine’s 2013-14 Euromaiden Revolution. Experts say that a leading cause of success there was the presence of simultaneous demonstrations in many settlements throughout the country, forcing the government of Viktor Yanukovych to rely on a smaller number of security personnel in the capital, Kyiv. While other factors — such as government defections and opposition presence within state institutions — were also important, the eventual toppling of Yanukovych was enabled in large part by rural protests.

The other protesters in Khashuri are keenly aware of how crucial their ongoing efforts are to the success of the protest movement as a whole.

“We can really feel the difference between these protests and other ones, whether they were in the spring [of 2024, following the adoption of the controversial ‘foreign agent’ law] or in past years,” says Elisa Takvelishvili, an English teacher. “Every town in Georgia is showing that they reject this government’s course, that we are all together in demanding new elections and reversing this decision to reject Europe. And I think it’s important that people in Tbilisi see that we are with them too.”

While domestic events continue apace, arguably the most significant recent development for the outcome of Georgia’s crisis may have taken place abroad: the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.

Both Georgian Dream and the Georgian opposition have jostled for favour with the mercurial new American leader. While Georgian Dream officials had reason to believe that an authoritarian-leaning Trump may prove more sympathetic to their democratic shortcomings, the opposition seems to have gotten the inside track out of the gates: it was Salome Zourabichvili, and not her official replacement as Georgian president, Mikheil Kavelashvili, who attended Trump’s inauguration. Zourabichvili has since continued to campaign for punitive actions against GD figures in Washington, although it’s unclear what appetite the new US administration has for such measures.

On the ground, Georgians say they need more support from the European Union in particular if their movement is to succeed.

“To be honest, I’m disappointed about the position of European countries [on what’s happening here],” says Irina Mchertvidze, a local journalist in Khashuri. “They have some nice speeches, but we need some more concrete actions. If it continues like this for a long time, there is a risk that people will just get tired and give up, thinking that they are alone.”

The feeling of being alone on the frontlines against Russian influence has left Mchertvidze and many of her countrymen sensing that Europe does not fully appreciate the sacrifices her country has made in pursuit of its European future.

“Georgians have had more struggles than most countries that are already in the EU,” she says. “We have fought a war with Russia, and we are now under occupation by a Russian regime led by a Russian citizen. We cannot do it alone. We need support from our friends.”

Mchertvidze, Kaulashvili and others nevertheless continue to dutifully protest whenever they can. If the Georgian revolution is to win, it may be places like Khashuri that play the pivotal role.