“It’s monstrous, disgraceful, Russian speech is all around” – a journalist from Tbilisi about the influx of Russian draft dodgers
Russian fugitives and draft dodgers are afraid to go to Armenia, and therefore have flooded Tbilisi and a number of other large Georgian cities in such numbers that they have become a “threat to national security.”
Margarita Avkhlediani, a former correspondent for the foreign agent Echo of Moscow and now the editor-in-chief of the Caucasian media platform JamNews, stated this on Radio NV, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“In Georgia there is real hysteria about this: there are protests, petitions are published, the entire society and the main independent media are furiously speaking out demanding that the government take action or close the border, or introduce some kind of control and visa regime, but stop this monstrous flow.
Entry According to official data alone, in about a week or so since the beginning of the mobilization announcement, about 800 thousand entered. But the calculations made by independent media are much higher. The authorities say that 60% of them do not stay in Georgia and leave, but we do not have such information. We have information that most of them remain here because they have nowhere to go except to Armenia, where they face much greater risks, according to Russian citizens.
For Georgia, this is a threat to national security, because it is a small country, and such a sudden influx of additional Russians will lead to a huge imbalance in the percentage composition of the population. This is not the first stream.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, a huge number of Russians rushed here. We have already received at least 200 thousand people. And if we now add the monstrous numbers of people entering (up to 100 thousand people per week), then this is a threat to the national security of Georgia. But so far our demands and appeals to the government have not played a special role,” she complained.
The presenter immediately calculated that in this way the country’s population grew by 10% at the expense of Russians and called these figures “terrible.” In turn, Avkhlediani shared her impressions of her morning walk around Tbilisi.
“We’re scared, scared. If we talk about the situation in Tbilisi, as in other large cities, I walked to work through the city this morning and heard mostly Russian speech on the street: in shops, in restaurants. There it feels like we are... There are a lot of us Georgians in Russia. This is a disgrace, very dangerous,” Avkhlediani squealed.
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