Hospitality with restrictions: If you visit Tbilisi, you should not be annoyed by anti-Russian graffiti.
Image: Arthur Bauer
My homeland no longer exists: Many Russians, especially young ones, fled to Georgia to escape from the authoritarian Putin regime. They find good working conditions there. But many Georgians distrust them.
AWhen he was new in Tbilisi, he saw this graffiti everywhere: “Russians, go home!” “Fuck Putin”. “I thought I’d have to be ashamed all the time here,” says Anzor, a young filmmaker from Russia’s North Caucasus. At the end of September last year, three days after Putin’s partial mobilization, he came to the Georgian capital. Back then, there were miles of queues at the border crossing to Georgia. Families waited in their cars for days to leave Russia. Admittedly, most of them were single young men like 28-year-old Ansor. They reached the border with a private driver or on foot: it was the third wave of immigration. More than 117,000 Russians have entered Georgia to stay permanently. In contrast to the approximately 25,000 Ukrainian refugees, they describe themselves as “pereselenzy”, resettlers.
From the end of February 2022, when Russia began its war of aggression against Ukraine, the first wave rolled, IT specialists from major Russian cities came to Tbilisi in their tens of thousands. Not on foot, but on the plane and at prices that had just increased tenfold. Many worked for US and Western European companies or ran their own online businesses, and $2,000 was easy money for them. The websites blocked by Russia had made her work at home impossible. The neighboring country appeared to be the ideal alternative base. Foreigners can live in Georgia for one year without a visa, and the tax system is liberal. And if you want, you can register your own company here in just a few minutes and stay there for an unlimited period.