TBILISI, Feb 16 (Portal) – On the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nikolai Kireev sat with his three-year-old son and cried as he read the news.
“That evening I decided it was obvious that we had to leave the country as soon as possible,” Kireev, who is originally from Moscow, told Portal in an interview at his new home in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, where he is living Bookshop has opened aimed at Russian exiles.
Kireev is one of hundreds of thousands of Russians who have resettled in Georgia after February’s invasion and September’s announcement of “partial mobilization” in Russia.
According to the Georgian Interior Ministry, as of November 1, 112,000 Russians were in the country of 3.7 million people.
The emigrants have met with a mixed reception in Georgia, a country that has deep historical ties to its northern neighbor and was part of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union for nearly two centuries.
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While the emigrants have helped Georgia rank among the world’s fastest-growing economies, along with neighboring Armenia — another popular destination for anti-war Russians — many Georgians view them with suspicion. Soaring housing costs in Tbilisi, fueled by the Russian influx, only exacerbate the situation.
“They are not our friends, they are our enemies,” said Lado Kikinadze, a 29-year-old Georgian student. “But they do business here and they want to have a drink with us.
Georgian public opinion is overwhelmingly pro-Ukrainian, and anti-Russian graffiti is ubiquitous on the streets of Tbilisi. Opposition parties have called for a visa regime to limit the number of Russian arrivals.
“NOT VERY FRIENDLY”
[1/5] Bookshop owner Nikolai Kireev, who recently relocated to Georgia from Russia, is seen through a window in Tbilisi, Georgia, February 14, 2023. Portal/Irakli Gedenidze
“There are some radicals,” said Gleb Kuznetsov, a businessman originally from St. Petersburg. “Or maybe not radicals, but people who are generally not very friendly to foreigners and have avoided us.”
Kuznetsov said his craft shop was the target of a wave of negative Google reviews and the door was covered in anti-Russian stickers.
Given recent history, the Russian newcomers are deeply undesirable to some Georgians.
In the 1990s, Moscow supported separatists in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, expelling the regions’ ethnic Georgian populations.
In 2008, a second brief war with Russia over the status of the breakaway regions cemented a bitter legacy. Today, according to a United Nations report from 2021, around 280,000 Georgians remain refugees in their own country.
With thousands of Russians now living in Tbilisi, the exiles have created their own areas, congregating in bars, shops and cafes where few locals come and little Georgian is spoken.
Likewise, Russian is less widely spoken in Georgia than in other former Soviet republics, increasing the divide between newcomers and long-established locals.
Bookshop owner Kireev, who said he is learning Georgian, said Georgians make up less than 10% of his clientele.
“It’s very difficult, because we don’t know the Georgian language, let’s try to learn it. But since that language barrier (exists), it’s quite difficult to navigate.”
Portal reporting; Edited by Alex Richardson
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