In Tbilisi
Eliot Rothwell
In the last week of March, I joined the thousands of people who left Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. I travelled first to Yerevan, in Armenia, before taking the thirty-minute connecting flight to Tbilisi. The capital of Georgia is a haven for opposition-minded Russians. Many of them are young IT workers or creatives, taking advantage of a year-long visa waiver. Others are journalists, including the editors of TV Rain, Russia’s last independent channel until it was forced to shut down a few days after the invasion. Soon after arriving I called a few language schools and found that beginners’ Georgian classes were already oversubscribed.
Finding a place to live was also difficult. An English artist, who had been in Tbilisi for almost five years, said rents had leapt by 100 per cent in some places. Ilya, a web developer who came from St Petersburg with his wife and infant son, was surprised to find a letting agent had arranged for four other groups of people to view an apartment at the same time. Rentals listed on property websites in the morning were already gone by the afternoon. Some landlords were asking for three months’ rent up front, and others refused to let their apartments to Russians.
Across Tbilisi, the words ‘Fuck Russia’ and ‘Fuck Russians’ had been sprayed on walls. Restaurant and food delivery receipts said ‘Fact Check: 20 per cent of Georgia is occupied by Russia’. One nightclub announced on Instagram that Russians needed to sign up for a ‘passport’ before entering. It was more of a declaration than a passport, and included a set of tick boxes: is Russia an occupier? Do you agree with the statement ‘Putin is a dickhead’? Do you agree Abkhazia and South Ossetia are parts of Georgia?
The Ukrainian flag was everywhere: in bars, restaurants and cafes, draped across the entrance to my apartment block and fluttering alongside the Georgian flag on the Moorish-revival Opera and Ballet Theatre. Some Georgians have taken their solidarity further, journeying to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion. At least 17 have died since 24 February, fighting as members of the Georgian Legion, which was founded at the outbreak of war in the Donbas in 2014.
Kakha, who owns bars and restaurants in Tbilisi, told me that some of his friends doubted the motives of Russians coming to Georgia, believing they were fleeing a collapsing economy rather than political repression. ‘My friends,’ Kakha said, ‘think Russians should fight Putin in Russia.’
Others have been more sanguine, recognising that leaving Russia is a sign of disaffection with a war they didn’t want, launched by a president they didn’t vote for. ‘It’s all about respect,’ according to Irakli, an engineer at a Georgian telecoms company. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that Russians cannot speak Georgian right away, but they need to learn the three magic Georgian words – hello, thank you, goodbye – to show that they appreciate that they are guests here.’ He didn’t dwell on the 2008 war or the loss of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. ‘Most of the Russians who came here are in their twenties. They were children or teenagers when Russia invaded Georgia. They came here because they do not support Putin.’
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-georgia-russia-report/georgia-started-war-with-russia-eu-backed-report-idUSTRE58T4MO20090930