Emotions are running high in Georgia’s capital, where protesters over the weekend took to the streets for a sixth day in a row. Violence broke out late last week, as citizens unhappy with the ruling of the Georgian Dream party were spurred into action by the appearance of a Russian official in the Georgian parliament. The exceptional violence with which the protests were suppressed made headlines worldwide. But beyond the troubling casualty figures—240 people wounded, two blinded, and 53 still in the hospital—lies an equally momentous geopolitical story: For as Russia, too, reacted to the protests, its disproportionate response to its neighbors’ internal affairs hinted at Vladimir Putin’s insecurities about his own regime.

On June 20 at an inter-parliamentary assembly on Orthodoxy, Sergei Gavrilov, a member of Russia’s communist party, found himself in the speaker’s chair at the Georgian parliament. The image prompted thousands to take streets. Protesters demanded that the people responsible for funding and hosting Russian representatives in Georgia—which fought a war with Moscow in 2008—be held accountable. In response to the outpouring of frustration, both with the Kremlin and with unaccountable authorities at home, the Georgian government ordered the riot police to disperse the demonstration. The crackdown lasted for hours, police shooting rubber bullets. The next day, the heavy-handed response prompted people to take the streets once again, calling for the resignation of the interior minister.

Georgia’s informal ruler, Bidzina Ivanishvili, an oligarch whose wealth totals almost half of the country’s GDP, seems to hope that popular anger will fade if he replaces appointed officials—a move used on many occasions, and which may not work this time. But Russia’s response has been equally notable.

In the wake of the incident, Russian President Vladimir Putin banned Russian citizens and airlines from flying to Georgia, and ordered those currently in Georgia to return to Russia. The response was reminiscent of Moscow’s response to the “EuroMaidan” protests in 2013 in Ukraine, which the Kremlin suggested were the product of a fascist junta. Again last week, Putin accused protesters of Russophobia. Unlike Ukraine, however, where Moscow justifies its continued intervention by saying it is protecting the country’s Russian-speaking population, Georgia has no significant population of Russian-speakers; Moscow has instead put Russian tourists at the center of its response. Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, criticized Georgians on June 21 for not upholding “hospitality praised over the centuries.” Then she went on to reiterate Russian tropes about the people of the Caucasus regions calling Georgians “primitive.”

The Caucasus has always been something exotic, foreign, and backwards in the imagination of Russian “tourists,” from Tolstoy to Pushkin, Lermontov, and later, filmmakers and writers in the Soviet Union. In Soviet Russia and persisting in the present, stereotypes about Georgians have been similar to those held against the Italians in the United States: emotional people that dance, sing, bake pizza, and engage in the occasional mafia activity. Russian images of Georgia tend to focus on food and culture: Khachapuri (cheese bread), Khinkali (dumplings), Saperavi (Georgian wine), and “Suliko” (a popular Georgian song in Russia).