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Salome Zourabichvili (right) was filmed asking masked riot police: “Are you serving Russia or Georgia?”
Salome Zourabichvili’s family fled Georgia in 1921 after Soviet forces snuffed out the country’s three-year experiment with independence from Russia.
A century later, Georgia’s pro-Western president is refusing to leave office, arguing she is the last legitimate institution in her country.
On Sunday, her six-year term as president is due to end. According to a new system for selecting the head of state, on that day she will be replaced by former Manchester City footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili, chosen with the support of the governing Georgian Dream party.
Zourabichvili, 72, has denounced his election under an electoral college system in which he was the only candidate as a travesty.
When she became president in 2018 she was endorsed by Georgian Dream, but she has since condemned their contested election victory in late October as a “Russian special operation” and backed nightly pro-EU protests outside parliament.
The government says if she refuses to leave office she will be committing a crime.
If she is forced out, she says the ruling party’s takeover of the state will be complete and Georgia will have surrendered its sovereignty to a party that she accuses of serving Moscow.
‘A mythical place’
Salome Zourabichvili was born in France in 1952 into a prominent family of Georgian émigrés. Her grandfather, a minister in the government of briefly independent Georgia, fled to France in 1921.
Georgia, then under Soviet rule, loomed large in her childhood. It was a “mythical place, which only existed in books,” she said in a 2004 interview.
Though raised in a culturally Georgian environment, speaking the language at home and attending Georgian Orthodox church services, she easily integrated into French culture. She attended France’s elite schools, including Sciences Po, traditionally a feeder for the country’s top public servants.
She excelled, serving as a French diplomat for nearly 30 years. But throughout, her true passion remained in extricating her parents’ mysterious country of origin from Russia’s influence and bringing it closer to the West.
“She sees it as her life’s mission to bring Georgia into Europe. Everything else for her has always
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