Narrating the grey zone: values in Georgia’s war-induced sanctions economy

Sanctions imposed by the international coalition responding to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have reshaped political-economic dynamics across the South Caucasus and Central Asia by redirecting trade flows, increasing the strategic importance of intermediary states and generating new spaces of regulatory ambiguity. While existing scholarship has examined sanctions circumvention primarily through legal, economic and geopolitical perspectives, less attention has been paid to the value-based narratives through which economically ambiguous practices are interpreted and contested. This article asks how competing actors construct the legitimacy of sanctions-related economic practices within these grey zones. Drawing on a qualitative, multi-scalar case study of Georgia between February 2022 and March 2026, the analysis combines discourse and narrative analysis of political statements, policy documents, media and social media content, civil society publications, and seven semi-structured interviews. It identifies four recurring value clusters: sovereignty, economic survival, legal and moral responsibility, and fairness. The findings show that at the macro and meso levels, actors compete over the values’ interpretation and prioritisation. At the micro level, traders, logistics operators, brokers and other market actors adapt broader political narratives to everyday commercial practices, particularly by fragmenting responsibility and normalising informal practices. The article demonstrates that legitimacy within sanctions-related grey zones is produced through ongoing cycles of narratives, counter-narratives and value contestation.