"Russia? Homeland? What is this? I had to leave before "

Thousands of Russians have been living in traffic on the border with Georgia for several days, trying to escape from mobilization. That's what is happening there now. Report "Medusa"

On September 27, traffic jam on the Russian-Georgian border amounted to more than 20 kilometers. Russians who are saved from mobilization spend a few days to leave the country. The authorities of North Ossetia at the same time deployed at the border the mobilization point of the military commissariat. At the request of Medusa, journalist Vladimir Sokolov tells how the Russians, throwing their cars, intersect the Verkhny Lars checkpoint for days.

"As if tore off the seal"

At the Tbilisi Airport, a woman of about forty and two of her sons, looking around in confusion, stand in the zone where relatives and taxi drivers meet arrivals. All three are dressed in the weather - in too warm for Tbilisi +18 scarves and jackets. Valentine with children - one thirteen years old, another nine - flew from Ufa. Her husband, a military-liable reserve officer, is now “somewhere in traffic” in front of the Georgian border.

The only checkpoint through which you can enter Georgia from Russia is the Verkhny Lars checkpoint. It is located 35 kilometers from Vladikavkaz. According to the authorities of North Ossetia, on September 27, the length of the cork from those who wanted to cross the border was 20-30 kilometers, more than 5.5 thousand cars stood in it. You can drive this distance in three to four days. Many people trying to escape from mobilization did not count on such a period and did not stored food and water.

The Valentina family, after the announcement of mobilization, could not decide for a long time. But she changed her mind after knocking on the door of the apartment. “It is even unknown who was knocking. We did not open. But as if they were torn off the seal, ”recalls Ufimka. In the morning of the next day, the whole family, leaving a cat at home, got into the car to leave the country. The key to the apartment was left "under the pebble" so that the relative could feed the cat and water flowers. Now Valentina and her husband regret that they “broke”: in her homeland, according to her, “it was clear what to wait, although nothing good was [not expected].” In Georgia - "it is incomprehensible, but also nothing good." Valentina has a Mir card with him, not working abroad, and a little cash. In Tbilisi - no friends.

Valentine agreed with her husband to meet in Stepantsminda-this is a village a few kilometers from the Georgian-Russian border and the Kazbegi / Upper Lars checkpoint. At the airport, a local taxi driver approached her almost immediately and began to persuade them to take them to Stepantsmind for 15 thousand rubles: “You still won’t get cheaper. What will you hang around here, who to wait? " In the end, Valentine and children agree to go.

You can get from Tbilisi to Stepantsminda on a minibus - an old private minivan with a “Kazbegi” sign on the windshield (as Stepantsmind was called until 2007). Such "buses" depart from the bus station.

At six in the morning, only two people in the cabin, so the initial cost of thirty -thirty Lari increases to forty .

The second passenger - the Chechen Daud - goes to Grozny. Daud says that he lived in Germany for ten years, and now he returns home through Georgia, because his mother fell ill. Several times for a trip, Daud speaks with her on the phone in Chechen and sighs, they say, haunts.

About half of the oncoming cars on the highway after leaving Tbilisi - with Russian numbers, most of the Moscow ones. Most often, cars from Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don, Stavropol are found. In the telegram chats of Russians traveling to Georgia, which spontaneously formed after the start of mobilization, they say that cars with Crimean numbers are not missed . The same thing, as they write in chats, applies to cars with numbers of self -proclaimed LPR and DPR .

Many cars from North Ossetia. The driver of the minivan explains that these are “shuttles” who carry people from Vladikavkaz in Tbilisi.

"Stop fighting money"

Two young guys with bicycles have just crossed the border with Georgia. They sit on a wet bench, substitute their faces with rain and smile blissfully.

- Guys, where do you go? - The local taxi driver who was nearby asks immediately.

“We don’t know,” one of them replies, not ceasing to smile.

Sasha and Dima came to Georgia from Stavropol. They reached the bus by Vladikavkaz, bought bicycles in the city and reached them before the cork in the Upper Lars area. Then they walked, taking the bicycles nearby: the path to the mountain, it is hard to ride. Both of them did not serve, do not have a military specialty, they work as designers. They were not disturbed from the military registration and enlistment office, but, “seeing all this,” Dima and Sasha, according to them, “decided to bring down”. “It’s somehow scary to walk the streets. Russia? Homeland? What is this? It was necessary to leave before, ”Dima thinks.

“It’s easier for us than all these people,” says Dima, clinging his hand to the car, already standing on the Georgian side of the border. “All property with him,” he adds, pointing to his head. In Russia, Sasha and Dima, according to them, "did not have anything left but parents."

Having rested a little in the rain, the young people sit on bicycles again. "Do you know where we are next?" - asks Sasha. “Nope,” Dima replies. Both smile. An hour and a half later Sasha and Dima were already about 25 kilometers from the border - on the highway leading in Tbilisi.

On the morning of September 27, the North Ossetia authorities allowed a hiking across the border-due to an increase in the “tributary of passenger transport” and “stressful situation”. Prior to this, the checkpoint could only be driven - by car, bicycle or scooter or even monocoles. In telegram chats, where people who are trying to leave Russia in Georgia communicate, over the past six days you can find more than a hundred announcements of sale: “I will sell three bicycles of 20 tons of 20 tons”, “SCOTT ASPECT 960 bicycle,“ American ”for a large person, I sell for the same price that I bought to whistles with Lars.” Or simple: "I will sell great at the checkpoint."

The Verkhny Lars - Chat group is the largest among the like: it has more than 130 thousand people. The number of messages appearing in the chat per day reaches 35 thousand. Here they are interested in whether it is possible to drive on a simple bicycle, ask to seize the suitcase for surcharge and are interested in how much the “toss” will cost before the traffic jam-from the Kabardino-Balkarian village of Urukh or Ossetian Mozdok, Lower Lars or ChMI. “Guys, what are you?! What are large for the lam [million] and benz [gas] for the wing of the aircraft?! - They are indignant in the chat. - You are all here on the same topic, not through your fault, you just want to live normally, without fear of dying tomorrow to die for nothing! So help each other! Stop fighting money! "

On September 26, armored personnel carriers drove up to the border with Georgia. This caused a wave of alarming messages in chats. Some tried to joke: "Two places in the armored personnel carrier to the LPR and the DPR." Others grumbled: "It would be better if they brought the closets." Later, the border administration reported that armored personnel carriers had adjusted "for any unforeseen case." Then, in Upper Lars, the mobilization point of the military registration and enlistment office was deployed - then the North Ossetia authorities reported that only the residents of the region would be issued in it.

Local taxi drivers are on duty at the checkpoint, waiting for the Russians to go through the border. The passage to Tbilisi is from five to ten thousand rubles, if you move away from the checkpoint, you can agree for three thousand plus a thousand for transporting a bicycle. You can get to the capital for much less money if you pay to Lari. But all come - rubles.

"Wife said" go ""

On the evening of September 27, according to Yandex. Maps ”, a cork from the upper Lars stretched almost to the village of Balta - this is about 20 kilometers.

“We were lucky, only eight hours stood,” says Yegor, who had just traveled. According to him, a traffic jam near Vladikavkaz is created artificially: the civilian car, according to Yegor, is specially across the road and you can go around it only in the oncoming lane. Nearby traffic police officers, but they do not seem to notice the obstacle formed. Yegor says - "they look away." He claims that cars with North Ossetia numbers drive along the oncoming lane “without problems” - the road police do not stop them. Others may try to attach themselves to their tail, but many people are still inhibited by the traffic police. “We were offered escort with flashing lights for a thousand dollars per car. This is lawlessness, ”says Yegor.

In the same traffic jam, 43-year-old military radio operator Sergei from Kirov (the name was changed at the request of the interlocutor) is waiting for his turn to cross the border). In the army, he has not served for a long time, is engaged in Internet advertising. At first, Sergey did not plan to leave Russia. After the announcement of mobilization, he stopped opening the door to strangers and began to monitor what was happening in the entrance. Sergei decided that if employees of the military registration and enlistment office appear there, he would leave for a relative in the village. In his plan, he doubted: "Just from the village they are rowing now."

On September 23, Sergei began to talk about leaving his wife. “[He told his wife] they say, you and I are sitting and planning life based on today's legislative framework. And they change laws every day. The wife said “go,” the man recalls. He went.

The posts of the road police, according to Sergey, began under Mozdok, this is about 120 kilometers from Upper Lars and 90 kilometers from Vladikavkaz: “They extorted a bribe - three thousand. Otherwise, they promised to "arrange the problems associated with mobilization". " Starged on a thousand.

In the area of ​​Vladikavkaz, says Sergey, the traffic police specially slowed down the movement: the policeman stood on the highway, stopped cars and reported that there was a large traffic jam in the Upper Lars, so “have to wait”. Cars passed in batches - twenty cars every 30-40 minutes.

The Vladikavkazets, according to Sergey, suggested that go to Georgia show the routes of the detour of such “buffer posts” for two thousand rubles, but Sergei coped on his own. After a detailed study, Yandex. Cars ”one of the posts he managed to go around through the private sector.

On the night of September 25 to September 26, the movement slowed down even more, and the price tag for information for bypass tracks grew to forty thousand rubles, Sergei recalls. For such an amount, he said, the locals proposed to show the detour of the Vladikavkaz posts through the mountains: "Someone agreed, the queue moved a little."

The man calculated: given the speed of advancement in the cork, you will have to stand for three to four days. “Neighbors” by traffic and Sergei himself did not believe in this at first - everyone hoped to reach the next day and to the fact that seven kilometers would have to pass for several kilometers were not ready.

On September 26, Sergey healed the speed of his movement to the border: he drove five hundred meters in nine hours. In the morning of the 27th, after coffee and fast-cook noodles, hired on a hiking tile taken from the house, he threw the car on the side of the road and moved to a bicycle, which he also grabbed with him. He said goodbye to the car - without any hope, he already decided from Georgia to look for someone who could overtake her.

When Sergey left the traffic jam on a bicycle, the price for the place in the cars, already standing in the line for travel, he said, began to reach up to 25 thousand rubles. At the same time, there were proposals to show the road to the detour of a checkpoint, that is, in fact, to enter Georgia illegally-for only three hundred thousand rubles, as well as “redeem the car”, that is, buy it from those who decided to throw the car and continue to move on foot. Without a car, the path to the checkpoint can be overcome much faster - in just a day .

Two children and Sergey’s wife remained in Russia. They have not yet decided what to do next.

On the evening of September 27, the head of North Ossetia, Sergei Minyailo, said that the agendas at the Verkhny Lars checkpoint will be handed to all Russians subject to a call, and “mobile operational groups consisting of representatives of military registration and enlistment offices and executive bodies” have already been organized at the entrances and the checkpoint itself. The region’s authorities also said that they may limit the entry of cars for citizens without registration in the region.

* * *

Meanwhile, in Tbilisi, the hype of housing and hotels. Rent prices began to rise - this already happened when thousands of Russians sharply moved to Georgia after the outbreak of war.

Many Georgian citizens are outraged by the number of arriving Russians and the fact that the country's authorities do not stop this flow. The leader of the opposition party "Agnibeli Strategy" Georgy Vashadze on September 27 demanded that the government of an immediate temporary closure of the border for Russian citizens:

Vladimir Putin signed a decree “On the approval of the concept of the humanitarian policy of the Russian Federation abroad”, where it is written that the Russian Federation will closely monitor compliance with the rights of the Russian -speaking population in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova and Georgia. What is the most alarming, [chairman of the ruling party "Georgian Dream"] Irakli Kobahidze actually created reason to Vladimir Putin and Putin's doctrine for Russian aggression. We remember very well how Russia used the same strategy in the early 1990s to justify its attacks.

“Citizens of Russia have been visiting Georgia for years, so we will not give obstacles to this process now,” said Vakhtang Gomelauri, head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. He also cited the data according to which about 10 thousand Russians are now crossing the border now, while before the start of mobilization, this number was about six thousand, and 60% of the Russians arrived soon leave Georgia.

On September 28, the Georgian movement “Time has come” (“Droa”) is going to hold a protest rally on the Georgian-Russian border. The protesters say:

The unprecedented influx of Russian citizens increases the risks for the safety and economy of Georgia. The country is not ready to withstand such an influx of migrants. In addition, in the context of the proven cooperation of the State Security Service of Georgia with the FSB of Russia, it will be impossible to establish who crosses the border.

* * *

In the courtyard of one of the Tbilisi hotels there are five cars: one with Georgian rooms, the other with the Moscow ones, three with Krasnodar. On the asphalt near the bridge over Kuru, someone wrote in red paint: “Visa for Fucking Russian”-and drawn a heart.

Vladimir Sokolov , with the participation of Anastasia Sechina . Stepantsminda - Tbilisi, Georgia