Tbilisi, Georgia – President Bush traveled Monday to one of Europe’s newest democracies to broadcast his message about spreading freedom and democracy.
Bush, who is unpopular in Western Europe, received an enthusiastic welcome in Georgia, where thousands of people lined the road from the airport into town. Capping a five-day trip to Europe and Russia, the president will deliver a speech on freedom today to as many as 100,000 Georgians in Tbilisi’s Freedom Square, the staging ground for the bloodless 2003 “Rose Revolution” in the former Soviet republic.
Touring Europe to mark the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, Bush has sought to equate his efforts to bring democracy to the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere to its return in Western Europe after World War II and its spread in Eastern Europe after communism collapsed.
In Georgia, President Mikhail Saakashvili is struggling to build democracy in a country plagued by corruption, political instability and economic hardship.
Bush’s visit, the first to Georgia by a U.S. president, was the latest move in his diplomatic dance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who supported the government that Saakashvili ousted. The new president rose to power after he and his followers stormed the Georgian Parliament armed with nothing but flowers.
Bush went to Georgia after joining Putin and more than 50 world leaders earlier Monday at a ceremony in Moscow marking the end of World War II in Europe. Nazi Germany surrendered May 8, 1945.
Elderly Red Army veterans and crisp columns of a new generation of Russian soldiers filed through Red Square in a celebration that blended echoes from the past with hopes for the future.
In the packed reviewing stand, former WWII allies turned enemies in the Cold War sat side by side, underscoring how the world has changed since fascism and communism were defeated in Europe.
Leaders from a host of new democracies carved from the former Soviet empire – Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and the Slovak Republic, among others – were also on hand.
