Ukraine brings home 65 citizens stranded on Russia-Georgia border

Some 65 Ukrainians who had been stuck in legal limbo at the Verkhny Lars border crossing between Russia and Georgia have returned home, Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha announced on Friday.

The 65 included 10 women and eight people who were seriously ill. Sybiha said 109 Ukrainians in total had been returned from the Russian-Georgian border in recent months, most of whom had been released from Russian prisons. Others were taken to Russia from occupied areas of Ukraine after the invasion began.

“The humanitarian crisis on the Russian-Georgian border occurred … when Russia deliberately began rapidly increasing the number of Ukrainian citizens deported via this checkpoint. Ukraine publicly appealed to the Russian Federation to send them directly to the border with Ukraine. … If Russia continues to ignore this [appeal], the only conclusion can be that this … is a planned Russian operation against Ukraine,” Sybiha wrote.

The Tbilisi Volunteers organisation, which had been helping the Ukrainians stuck in Georgia, told radio station Echo that about 30 people remained trapped in legal limbo in the buffer zone. These are people who have either not been able to prove that they have Ukrainian citizenship, or who are unwilling to return to their homeland. Telegram news channel Tbilisi Life said the exact number was 22.

The European Court of Human Rights had previously launched proceedings against Georgia and Ukraine, demanding detailed information on the status of the Ukrainian citizens who found themselves in limbo on the border as they do not have passports.

About 100 Ukrainian citizens had been stranded in a basement on the Russian-Georgian border for several months. Some protested the conditions of their detention in July, with one man slitting his throat, though he survived. Members of the group then announced a hunger strike on 6 August, though called off the strike two days later after they were visited by a representative from the Ukrainian Embassy in Tbilisi.