Russians Start Returning From Georgia

• 22.01.2024, 15:49

There are several reasons for this.

Russians who fled to Georgia from war and mobilization began to leave the country. At the end of 2023, 1,856,237 Russian citizens entered the republic, and 1,887,223 Russians left, according to data on the website of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The difference between those who entered and those who left was 30,986 Russians in favor of those who left the country. This is a net outflow of relocatees who moved for permanent residence in Georgia back in 2022. In total, 700 thousand Russians moved to the republic in the first year of the war in Ukraine, but by November 2023, 100 thousand of them remained living in the country, said Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili.

The outflow of relocatees could be provoked by the decision of the Georgian authorities to limit the issuance of foreign currency to Russians from their accounts in local banks. The National Bank of the Republic introduced a ban on withdrawing more than 20% of currency from accounts on September 1 last year.

Since the beginning of the war, Russians have been transferring money to Georgian banks. The National Bank reported that Russians, as of early June 2023, had opened approximately 110,000 accounts in Georgian banks and kept 2.42 billion lari (about $970 million) there — more than citizens of any other country. Largely thanks to this money and the people who invested it, Georgia’s GDP grew by 13% in 2022.

In addition to difficulties with withdrawing funds from bank accounts, Russians are threatened by other restrictions. At the end of the summer of 2023, a bill was introduced into the Georgian parliament to suspend the issuance of residence permits to Russian citizens until the end of 2024. A deputy from the opposition group Eurooptimists, Roman Gotsiridze, said that due to the massive movement of Russians to Georgia, prices in the country have risen and residents of the republic have problems buying and renting apartments.