More than 90 Ukrainian deportees from Russia are being held in a cramped Georgian border facility, trapped between two countries due to Georgia‘s refusal to let them in, citing criminal backgrounds. The detainees, mostly former prisoners in Russia who have been deported after serving their sentences, have been living in a damp, crowded basement for nearly two months.
The detainees mounted a protest on Sunday night, July 20, shouting, “We’re not allowed outside!” and “We’re being tortured here.” One man seriously harmed himself during the protest, and an ambulance arrived after more than an hour, bandaging his wounds before leaving without him. Nikolai Lopata, a 45-year-old detainee, described the conditions as “unbearable,” with men sleeping in shifts due to the lack of beds and limited access to medical care.
The men are provided with very little and lack reliable medical assistance, relying on emergency care. “An ambulance comes almost every day, sometimes twice a day, because there are disabled people, there are sick people,” Lopata said, adding that there is someone with epilepsy, a person with HIV, and another with tuberculosis. “But they don’t offer anything besides immediate help. Yesterday, for example, they made an injection of painkiller, then said, ‘That’s it, we can’t help with anything else.'”
Anna Skripka, a lawyer for the NGO Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine, explained that previously, deportees at this border crossing were transferred by bus to Tbilisi Airport to fly to Moldova and then on to Ukraine. However, after four detainees got off the bus and stayed in Moldova, the country halted cooperation. “They’re already back in Ukraine,” Skripka said about the missing four, “but Moldova said, ‘Stop, we do not want to risk it.'”
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha accused Russia of “weaponizing the deportation of Ukrainian citizens through Georgia.” “We are actively working with the Georgian and Moldovan sides to get the rest of our people transited to Ukraine,” he wrote. “To avoid further complications, we publicly offer Russia to send these categories of Ukrainian citizens directly to the Ukrainian border. We will be prepared to take them on from there. There are relevant parts of the border where this can be done.”
Skripka warned that the number of deportees will soar in the coming months, with hundreds of Ukrainians still waiting in Russian deportation camps. “According to our calculations, there are about 800 people. And if they are all brought to Georgia, it will be a disaster,” she said. Meanwhile, a recent edict issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin demands that Ukrainians living in the territories claimed by Moscow must either leave or accept Russian citizenship by September 10, potentially leading to mass deportations.