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.