Discussion
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Georgia’s ultimately suspended EU accession process in late 2024, the country has experienced a major political and informational shift. In a context of growing governmental control over media and discourse, anti-Western narratives have gained unprecedented visibility. While public support for European integration remains high, it is considerably weaker among Georgia’s Azerbaijani and Armenian minorities. Yet, little research has explored how these groups perceive and engage with Russian strategic narratives.
This communication draws on a fieldwork conducted in Tbilisi in May 2024, consisting of semi-structured interviews with media and civil society representatives, complemented by secondary data (reports, academic articles). It presents empirical evidence and preliminary analyses concerning the conditions under which Russian narratives are received, adopted, or contested within these specific sociolinguistic and territorial contexts.
Findings suggest that linguistic, identity, and territorial fractures deeply structure the conditions of Russian narratives’ persuasiveness. First, centralised information control and limited access to media in minority languages fosters informational dependency on external (often Russian-language) sources. Second, these borderland communities are embedded within overlapping transnational information spaces, exposing them to competing regional narratives, e.g. from Turkey and Iran. Third, local memory frameworks and spatial imaginaries mediate how geopolitical discourses are decoded and localised.
By situating these dynamics within Georgia’s evolving political and informational landscape, this contribution underscores the need for a contextualized, multiscalar understanding of how Russian strategic narratives resonate unevenly across diverse linguistic and territorial settings.
