The war threw her and her country through a series of crossroads.
Georgia is exposed, but not directly threatened;
closer than ever to the European Union, but far from joining it officially.
And its president, thrown headlong into battle, without being able to promise anything.
“I do not exercise executive power, but I have moral authority”, underlines Salomé Zourabichvili, just 70 years old, jet-black hair, pale blue eyes, in videoconference from her palace in Tbilisi, the capital.
An authority that gives it a historic role these days.
Firstly, because Ukraine and Georgia, as well as Moldova, applied together to join the European Union, a few days after the invasion.
Then, and above all, because Salomé Zurabishvili, on this side of the continent, is a powerful spokesperson for an Eastern Europe that dreams of the West.
"Through my history, I will undoubtedly be the most pro-European president of an entirely pro-European country," she smiles.
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Born in Paris in 1952, where her parents took refuge after the Soviet invasion of 1921, Salomé Zurabishvili comes from an illustrious Georgian family.
Economists, philosophers, politicians and intellectuals mingle there up to, today, his cousin Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, historian, academician and mother of Emmanuel, writer, and Marina, doctor and journalist.
“However, I was never showered with any pretension, remembers Kethevane Gorjestani, daughter of the president, Washington correspondent for the France 24 channel. We were told these family stories very simply, even punctuated by extraordinary destinies. .”
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Salomé Zurabishvili wrote her own, worthy of a novel.
French, brilliant diplomat (her son, Teymouraz, until recently adviser to Emmanuel Macron, followed the same path), she has a string of posts all over the world.
In 2003, History propelled her, in a few months, from the French Embassy in Tbilisi to the head of the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Salomé Zurabishvili then successfully negotiated the departure of the Russian military bases from Georgia.
A few difficult political years followed.
Elected MP in 2016, she acceded two years later, after a controversial election, to the presidency of this country so often invaded by the Russians.
"I think being a diplomat in her day fed [my mother's] posture, because a woman as martial or categorical as a man would have been called hysterical"
Kethevane Gorjestani, daughter of the Georgian president and correspondent in Washington for the France 24 channel.
Since then, and even more so in recent weeks, she has stood up to Vladimir Putin, has had meetings with her counterparts and interviews with Western media.
With, always, a mixture of firmness and serenity.
“We Georgians survive because we know how to defend our faith, our language and our identity, while cultivating a tradition of diplomacy.
This is what inspires me.”
The president does not claim any model, only values: calm, unity and the quest for harmony.
“I think having been a diplomat in his time fed this posture, notes his daughter, because a woman as martial or categorical as a man would have been qualified as hysterical.”
This female relationship to power, Salomé Zurabishvili also believes in it.
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"I think it creates a disposition more inclined to dialogue, to reflection, before using force, she analyzes, but these are only intuitions."
That she will perhaps confirm on May 25, during a world forum she is organizing on female leadership, conflict and peace.
A meeting planned before the war, but to which the conflict gives a new meaning, as in the presidency of Salomé Zurabishvili.
Her mandate and her political career, she says, will end in 2024. The rest will necessarily be written in the Caucasus: elected president, she had to renounce French nationality.
And close, at the same time, a chapter of a hundred years of family anchorage in the West.
To open another one, his own, out of the ordinary, too.