A content analysis of more than 300 articles on economy-related topics within a two-month timeframe revealed that the Russian-language pieces heavily featured negative opinion pieces rather than unbiased news reporting. The opinion pieces largely focused on discrediting Georgia and emphasizing its dependence on Russia. Mainstream as well as fringe pro-Kremlin media outlets in Russian, including Business Gazeta, NovaiaGazeta , Ruposters, and Vedomosti, and tvrain.ru participated in spreading these narratives.

A particularly prominent narrative targeted one of Georgia’s primary exports: wine. An article published on Ria.ru, for example, quoted Genady Onishenko, MP of the Russian Duma and former Chief Sanitary Doctor of the Russian Federation, as saying that “Georgian winemaking and the economy of Georgia as a whole will collapse in the aftermath of a ban on imports to Russia.” This article amassed more 1,700 engagements on Facebook, according to the social media analysis tool BuzzSumo.

These articles supported unprovable qualitative claims by Russian government officials. The Russian Federal Service for the Surveillance of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare, also known as Rospotrebnadzor, released a statement on the deterioration in quality of Georgian wine. The statement indicated that Russian officials had tightened controls over the quality and safety of wine imports after introducing new and unspecified tests in 2017 and monitoring the deterioration of wine import quality since 2014. The timing of the announcement coincided with rising political tensions between Georgia and Russia.

Georgia’s economic outlook

Despite unsubstantiated claims in Russian media outlets, there is no indication that the Georgian economy is expected to collapse as a result of escalating tensions between Georgia and Russia. In 2018, the total amount of money received from Russia through all channels — exports, tourism, remittances — amounted to 10.3 percent of Georgia’s gross domestic product (GDP). Even if Russian sanctions were to target all of these channels, its share in Georgia’s GDP is not large enough to trigger the collapse of country’s economy. Furthermore, a July 2019 report from the National Statistics Office of Georgia indicated an estimated GDP growth rate for the Georgian economy of roughly 5.0 percent in June 2019, one sign of a healthy economy.

More importantly, international financial institutions, for their part, have maintained a positive economic forecast for Georgia in 2019. In particular, the World Bank forecast that the Georgian economy will grow by 4.7 percent in 2019. While a slightly slower rate of growth than in the past two years, it is expected to bounce back to a 5 percent growth rate by 2021.

With regard to wine exports, Georgia has made efforts in recent years to diversify its export markets. A July 2019 report by the Tbilisi-based research firm Galt & Taggart on the state of Georgia’s wine industry noted that, before 2006, 92 percent of Georgian wine exports went to Russia. A 2006 Russian embargo on Georgian wine, however, had the long-term effect of driving the wine sector to improve quality control and build a customer base beyond the Russian market. By 2018, Georgia had expanded its wine exports to 53 countries, with the Russian market now absorbing a much lower 60 percent of total wine exports. The report ultimately concluded that, in the event of another Russian embargo on Georgian wine exports, “redirecting products to alternative markets will not be easy, but achievable.”

Conclusion

Although the protests have eased somewhat in Tbilisi, the information warfare against Georgia shows no signs of abating. To put pressure on Georgia, Russia has taken aim at its economy by suspending flights to the country, thereby discouraging Russian citizens from traveling there, and restricting Georgian imports.

To complement these economic measures, pro-Kremlin media have disseminated narratives about the health of Georgia’s economy, emphasizing its dependence on Russia. Despite their claims, however, independent forecasts on the future of country’s economy suggest that it will likely weather this latest deterioration in the tense Georgia-Russia relationship.