Will this be the next country to become a Russian proxy?

Next weekend’s general election in Georgia could seal its fate, especially if its former prime minister – an enigmatic, art-collecting oligarch and Putin ally who lives in a cliff-edge fortress – has his way, says Mark Hollingsworth

The painting Dora Maar au chat is one of Pablo Picasso’s most spectacular depictions of his muse and longtime mistress. And so, when the painting was made available for sale by Sotheby’s on 3 May 2006, excitement and tension gripped the New York City auction house.

Sitting towards the back of the room was an unassuming, short, thin, Georgian man remarkable only for a grey streak through his hair. Staff barely noticed him – but that changed dramatically when the bidding started.

Suddenly, the mysterious Georgian was waving his paddle regularly, and secured the iconic portrait for a staggering £52m, the second-highest amount ever paid for a painting at auction at that time and double its presale estimate.

As soon as the hammer crashed down, the unknown Georgian was surrounded by Sotheby’s staff and hastily escorted to a private room, away from the curious attention of journalists. Only later did the identity of the enigmatic buyer emerge – he was a 50-year-old oligarch called Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose $6.4bn (£4.9bn) fortune now makes him Georgia’s richest man, his total worth equalling one-third of the country’s gross domestic product.

Today, Ivanishvili is Georgia’s most powerful individual, as the founder and benefactor of the governing Georgian Dream Party. Having served as prime minister between 2012 and 2013, Ivanishvili now uses his wealth and power to rule the country from behind the scenes, based in his futuristic, 108,000 sq ft compound of glass cylinders and metal tubes built into a cliff.

Disguised as a cave, the $50m complex overlooks Tbilisi, the capital, where the reclusive oligarch issues edicts and speeches from behind a bulletproof podium, believing he is a target for assassination. A germophobe, he rarely touches other people and wears a mask when he ventures outside.

But it is Ivanishvili’s increasing authoritarianism that could result in the pro-European Black Sea state reverting back to the repressive days of the Soviet Union, and could expand Vladimir Putin’s influence over the country.

At the heart of Ivanishvili’s autocratic rule is his insistence on a law that forces organisations that receive overseas funding, including media outlets and anti-corruption NGOs, to register themselves as agents of a foreign power. This caused outrage and mass demonstrations on the streets of Tbilisi. “What the Georgian government is trying to force through is so contrary to the wishes of the vast majority, it has effectively become a coup d’etat against the people,” said James Nixey, head of Russia-Eurasia studies at Chatham House.

But what is significant about the foreign agents law is its uncanny resemblance to Russian legislation that has been used to suppress political dissent. And it is this shadow of Putin that could result in Georgia becoming a proxy Russian state, well within Moscow’s sphere of influence.

“Whether this is Kremlin-inspired or Kremlin-directed, the end result is the same – Georgia is deprived of its European future and Putin achieves his strategic objective,” said Tina Bokuchava, head of the leading opposition party, the United National Movement. “Putin wants to turn Georgia into a failed state that he controls through a government that is either his puppet or sabotages Georgia’s European aspirations.”

Bidzina Ivanishvili, the oligarch and former prime minister of Georgia, whose $6.4bn fortune makes him his country’s richest man (AP)

Last November, the European Commission issued an official recommendation to grant candidate status to Georgia, but the foreign influence law has since put paid to the country’s chances of joining the EU.

This looming shadow of Russian influence is personified by Ivanishvili. Born in 1956 into poverty in a small village in western Georgia, he moved to Russia in the late 1980s and was adept at buying run-down companies and then selling them at a vast profit. But it was during the 1990s, when the state sold off valuable assets on the cheap, that the Georgian entrepreneur made his fortune.

He set up Rossiyksy Kredit, invested in Russian pharmacies, property and hotels, and bought shares in strategic energy companies, notably Gazprom. And, like many oligarchs, he supported Boris Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election campaign.

On his return to his homeland, Ivanishvili was popular with ordinary Georgians, who admired the way he had made a fortune despite his impoverished origins. He led his party to victory in 2012, and although he served as prime minister for only one year, he has dominated Georgian politics ever since.

Next weekend, Georgia faces a historic, consequential election and, true to form, Ivanishvili has used incendiary rhetoric to raise the stakes. “This election must become the Nuremburg trials for the [opposition] United National Movement (UNM),” he said during a whistle-stop tour of historic towns.

After playing the Nazi card, he accused the UNM of treason, and said all opposition groups will be banned if his party is elected because they are “enemies of the state”. “I believe the logical next step would be to invalidate their parliamentary mandates,” said prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze. “You can’t have criminal members of a criminal force having the status of a member of parliament.”

The intense hatred of dissent exhibited by Ivanishvili has led to bizarre and unhinged moments. The oligarch is obsessed with trees and animals, notably giraffes and kangaroos, and even has a shark pool inside his fortress.

There have inevitably been comparisons with James Bond villains. But Ivanishvili is also, like Putin, fascinated by the supernatural, and is very superstitious. When his baobab trees died earlier this year, he was so distraught, he ordered his party leadership to blame it on his political rivals. He claimed that the death of the trees was a bad omen and could only have been caused by opposition comments.

But for the West, the forthcoming election is deadly serious. Reluctant to let Georgia slip into Russia’s cold embrace, the US is preparing sanctions against Ivanishvili on the grounds of his deepening ties to the Kremlin.

His rhetoric is eerily similar to Putin’s, attacking the UNM as “the global war party” for its support for Ukraine. While Russian intelligence agencies claim the CIA and MI6 are “plotting an uprising in Georgia”, the West fears that Russia could invade Georgia. The deputy head of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Andrei Klimov, suggested last month that the Kremlin could deploy troops to Georgia to prevent a revolution if its government requested its assistance.

Ahead of Saturday’s election, the atmosphere is reminiscent of Ukraine in 2014, when Putin claimed that the pro-democracy protesters were part of a US-backed coup and sent Russian troops into Crimea and eastern Ukraine. And look how that turned out.