A windowless basement space at a remote border crossing in Georgia has become the cramped home for Ukrainians who have been held by Russia, in some cases for years, and who are now being deporting.
Russia is kicking the Ukrainians out after forcibly removing most of them from territory its forces occupied as they advanced following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Many are convicts or suspects who were in Ukrainian jails and prisons when Russian troops seized swaths of land in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Once they are brought to what’s known as the “buffer zone” at the Kazbegi border crossing, most of them go no further, stranded while the wheels of bureaucracy turn. Ukraine must confirm their identity, check their citizenship, and issue new ID documents when necessary.
Recently, there have been as many as 56 people staying in the crowded space at a time, with new arrivals being sent in by Russia almost daily and others trickling out after waiting for two or more weeks. Others wait as long as 3 1/2 months, according to Volunteers Tbilisi, an aid group that helps Ukrainian refugees in Georgia.
While they stay, they live in “horrible conditions,” one inmate said in a video clip, panning around the room with a camera.
“There are no tables; everything’s made of spare parts,” he said. “The toilet is awful…. There are only 19 beds for 50 people, and they keep bringing people in without stopping.”
“Volunteers help out with food, thank God,” the man shooting the video said. “Otherwise, it’s totally bare -- the police bring nothing -- no food or water.”
Some of the people sent to the “buffer zone” facility have been diagnosed with HIV or tuberculosis, and their supplies of medicine have run low in some cases, Volunteers Tbilisi director Maria Belkina told RFE/RL. In acute situations, inmates have been taken to the hospital in Georgia.
In addition to former inmates in Ukrainian jails and prisons, some of the Ukrainians being sent across the border at Kazbegi were convicted in Russia in 2014-15, the first years of the Moscow-fomented war in the Donbas -- the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, according to Belkina.
When Belkina spoke to Current Time in late June, she said that 18 of the Ukrainians at the holding facility had not been convicted of any crime by Ukraine or Russia.
According to Belkina, the Ukrainian authorities do their best to complete the processes needed to get people out of the facility. But while Georgian authorities previously allowed the Ukrainians to stay in Georgia if they wanted to, they are now escorted to the airport and deported.
She also said that Georgia sometimes does not allow Ukrainians to leave the facility even if their documents are in order, and that this may be a reaction to the increasing numbers of Ukrainians being sent there by Russia. That, in turn, may be an effort by Russia to move the Ukrainians out before tighter Georgian immigration legislation takes effect this autumn.
“We think this is very careful preparation [by Russia] for what will happen in September…when Georgian migration policy changes,” she said, adding: “I suspect this is an effort to remove as many people as possible” in advance of the stricter rules, which she said would enable Georgia to refuse people entry without explanation.
