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Russians who escaped draft in no hurry to return from Georgia

“No rush” is how Russians, who escaped the recruitment drive, feel about leaving Georgia and returning home a month after Russia said it had concluded its mobilisation for its war in Ukraine.

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Suffering losses and being pushed back by Ukrainian forces, Russia announced the call-up on September 21 – a move that triggered a thousands-strong wave of draft-age men to flee to Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan in a bid to avoid being sent to the front.

More than 110,000 Russians have fled to Georgia this year, Reuters reported quoting statistics from the Georgian government. The influx turned out to be a double-edged sword, fuelling an economic boom on one hand and resentment on the other in a country where anti-Russian feelings are rife.

Despite Vladimir Putin and his Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu calling the draft, many say they are unlikely to return home any time soon.

“First and foremost the conflict must come to an end,” said Emil, a 26-year old games developer who spent two days queuing at the border to leave Russia.

“It’s got to a stage where everybody is at risk – especially men… I put my safety first. Of course, I don’t want to return to a country where police can arrest me for simply walking past them. I want freedom, to feel safe,” he said in an interview in Tbilisi.

But given the Kremlin’s disinclination to rescind an official decree ordering mobilisation, fears that call-ups could resurface without warning exist.

“I have a very vague idea of what should happen in Russia for me to want to go back there. But for now, I’ve rented a flat in Tbilisi for six months and registered a business. I’ll be here for the next six months,” said Slava, a 28-year-old who also works in the mobile games industry.

“I’ll be monitoring what’s going on in Russia. Of course, I would love to go back because – apart from certain aspects – I liked it there, and I love Russia.”

However, the arrival of thousands of Russians, many relatively well-off, in a comparatively poor country of just 3.7 million has been perceived as a token of losing control.

“There is a perception in society that the situation is out of control,” said opposition lawmaker Salome Samadashvili, speaking in front of a Ukrainian flag in her office.

Ms Samadashvili fears Putin could use the pretext of “protecting” Russians in Georgia as grounds for a further invasion mirroring what he did in Ukraine.

The common belief among Georgians is that a fifth of their country is occupied by Russia.

Numerous Russian arrivals, in a show of opposition to both the war and Putin’s repression at home, sympathise with that message, and some are putting down roots.

“We made a decision to move… so that we could feel freer,” said Denis Shebenkov, an entrepreneur who moved to Tbilisi in March. It was in June that he opened a coffee business in Tbilisi, and last month he closed his original coffee shop in St Petersburg.

“When I remember how the police in St Petersburg behave, or what the city administration and government does – I don’t want to return there at all,” he said.

Very much like Ukraine, Georgia is facing its own plight of two breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia remaining under Russian-backed separatists’ control.

In 2008, Moscow said they were under threat from the Georgian government and briefly invaded other parts of Georgia.

It was on August 12, 2008, that the then-President of Poland Lech Kaczyński, along with leaders of Ukraine and the Baltic States, spoke in front of an audience of 150,000 Georgians.

“Today it is Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, the day after tomorrow the Baltic States, and then perhaps my country, Poland,” President Kaczyński said, as bullets whizzed just hundreds of metres away.

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