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SHEKVETILI, Georgia — Over the previous 5 years, folks in Georgia witnessed a surreal spectacle: large, even centuries-old bushes floating upright on the Black Sea.
Imposing magnolias, tulip bushes and different magnificent species passed by on the water’s floor, their mighty boughs unfold broad in a procession that regarded each poetic and delirious.
The bushes, mounted on barges pushed alongside by tugboats, have been on their solution to replanting in a park being constructed by an eccentric billionaire and former prime minister, Bidzina Ivanishvili — a person many Georgians imagine nonetheless wields substantial political energy regardless of saying he retired to concentrate on philanthropy.
Greater than 200 bushes arrived on the park in complete, dug out of the soil within the impoverished villages and thick forests of Georgia, a small nation within the Caucasus. Mr. Ivanishvili personally vetted many of the selections.
About half have been ferried to the park on the barges, and one other half transported by vans. River beds have been widened, and trains needed to cease to make method for them, which Georgians seized on as proof of his persevering with capability to maneuver officers with the identical impunity he does bushes.
Opened to the general public in the summertime of 2020, Mr. Ivanishvili’s park is a uncommon public manifestation of his opaque however overwhelming presence in Georgia.
He has no official function in authorities, however his critics say Mr. Ivanishvili, 65, nonetheless has outsize sway behind the scenes.
“The facility is concentrated within the palms of 1 man, and naturally it’s Bidzina,” mentioned a former ally, Giorgi Gakharia, who resigned as prime minister in February, saying that the billionaire’s management had grow to be too suffocating.
The Shekvetili Dendrological Park, on Georgia’s Black Beach, displays Mr. Ivanishvili’s extravagant tastes, with its winding format — centered round a pond stuffed with pink flamingoes, pelicans and different unique birds — having been personally designed by him, in accordance with Paata Sulaberidze, the challenge’s supervisor.
A series-link fence separates the general public park from Mr. Ivanishvili’s property.
Entrance is free on the park, which price him tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to create, Mr. Ivanishvili mentioned in a uncommon interview with a enterprise journal in Georgia.
However indicators declaring this property non-public are all over the place. CCTV cameras are put in all through, and movement detectors stand in entrance of each tree. Look, however don’t dare contact. And that message goes for the garden, too. Guards with loudspeakers are fast to scold the noncompliant.
Nonetheless, many guests mentioned they benefit from the park immensely.
“It won’t be proper, but when these bushes really feel good right here, then why not?” mentioned Nyusya Goman, 19, a manicurist. “In fact, he did it for himself first,” she mentioned, referring to Mr. Ivanishvili. “Folks say that he comes within the mornings to get stuffed with power emanated by the bushes.”
Theories abound on why Mr. Ivanishvili is so infatuated with bushes. Some Georgians ruminate that he’s a druid who worships them.
Salomé Jashi, a Georgian movie director, sees one thing past a love of nature in Mr. Ivanishvili’s obsession.
“For me, a floating tree was an emblem of energy, of need, of wanting one thing at any price,” mentioned Ms. Jashi, who made a documentary concerning the park challenge.
Mr. Sulaberidze, the challenge’s supervisor, dismisses such conjecture. His boss, he mentioned, “simply loves bushes.”
Many Georgians say they admired Mr. Ivanishvili for the free entry to his park, which has obtained greater than 1.5 million guests to date, and for his philanthropic work, together with paying stipends to Georgia’s artists and poets.
“Folks don’t understand that he has helped so many in Georgia,” mentioned Rostom Bolkvadze, an entrepreneur from Batumi, the resort metropolis close by, who has visited the park.
Mr. Ivanishvili’s political opponents, nonetheless, evaluate him to a feudal lord, who sprays little driblets of wealth on folks to purchase their good will.
They usually insist his retirement is a fiction. “He’s nowhere to be seen, however the fact is that he’s current all over the place,” mentioned Armaz Akhvlediani, a member of Georgia’s Parliament.
Mr. Ivanishvili made his fortune in Russia, the place he assembled a metals and banking empire through the chaotic post-Soviet transition. His wealth is at present estimated at $6 billion, a sum that exceeds Georgia’s state finances for 2021.
Many Georgians speculate that the Kremlin by no means would have allowed such wealth to go away the nation except it was assured the cash can be used to purchase affect in Georgia, a strategically vital nation that’s struggling to protect its independence towards the good energy ambitions of neighboring Turkey and Russia.
One in every of Mr. Ivanishvili’s fiercest critics is a former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. After spending years overseas, Mr. Saakashvili made a dramatic and stunning return to the nation in September and is at present being held on abuse of workplace and different prices that he denies.
Mr. Saakashvili, who tried to distance Georgia from its Soviet previous throughout his presidency, calls himself “Putin’s prisoner” and claims Mr. Ivanishvili is the Kremlin’s lackey.
However Giorgi Khelasvili, a member of Parliament from the Georgian Dream get together, based by Mr. Ivanishvili, argued that the retirement was honest.
“His concept was to go away the system and he wished to go away the federal government a system that may maintain it and he would simply step apart,” Mr. Khelasvili mentioned.
Mr. Ivanishvili’s representatives denied a number of interview requests for this text.
If his function now’s murky, Mr. Ivanishvili as soon as performed a really open and outstanding half in Georgia’s emotionally fraught political scene, the place a candidate’s perspective towards Russia is scrutinized by voters.
Because the chief of a coalition of political events, he received the 2012 parliamentary elections and served as prime minister from October of 2012 by November of 2013, throughout which period he pursued Georgia’s NATO and European aspirations, but additionally tried to be pragmatic with Moscow.
His coalition had campaigned in opposition to Mr. Saakashvili, then the president, whose get together’s loss led him to step down and shortly depart the nation.
As seen this month in the lethal protests in Kazakhstan, the switch of energy in most of the former Soviet republics has typically been chaotic and violent. Mr. Ivanishvili’s supporters level to his choice to voluntarily step down as prime minister after a 12 months as proof he’s hardly energy hungry.
For now, Mr. Ivanishvili seems most all in favour of his eccentric hobbies, which typically manifested themselves throughout his stint as prime minister.
Mr. Akhvlediani, the lawmaker, who in 2013 labored carefully with Mr. Ivanishvili because the chairman of his political get together however has since had a falling out, recalled how on an official international go to to Strasbourg, Mr. Ivanishvili was principally within the metropolis’s zoo, the place he bought stork eggs to convey dwelling.
Whereas a ardour for bushes could seem innocent, that’s not essentially the case when a strong billionaire is the one hooked.
When Toby Kiers, a professor of evolutionary biology at Vrije College in Amsterdam, discovered about Mr. Ivanishvili’s endeavor to uproot historic bushes, she mentioned she felt bodily ache.
“For a whole lot of years, these historic bushes have been cultivating their distinctive underground ecosystems, together with huge fungal networks supporting the tree because it was a tiny sapling,” mentioned Dr. Kiers, who has been researching how bushes are linked. “When a tree is uprooted, that life assist system will get ripped from the soil, forsaking a barren wasteland.”
For Valentina Slobodenyuk, what was left behind was a view of the ocean that had been blocked by the enormous sequoia and ginkgo biloba that Mr. Ivanishvili took away for his park.
The bushes had performed a big function in her life, she mentioned, with the sequoia offering welcome shelter throughout thunderstorms. Ms. Slobodenyuk now visits the bushes of their new dwelling.
“I miss them very a lot,” she mentioned.
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