'You can no longer speak Georgian in Georgia': influx of Russians in Batumi angers locals

In the Georgian city of Batumi, inspections have begun of enterprises opened by Russians and in which Georgian is not spoken. Due to the influx of immigrants from Russia, disputes have flared up in the city - some see this as economic growth, while others see it as a direct threat, reports “Radio Liberty".

Photo: IStock

“In Georgia, you can’t even speak Georgian,” the driver of the delivery service was indignant. He was trying to deliver a shipment of mineral water to the Oriental Bakery in Batumi's quaint historic district, and the barista from Belarus, with his basic Georgian language skills, struggled to understand the delivery man.

In the end, the driver left, but added only one thing: “We don’t need Russian here.”

Like many coastal settlements, the old town of Batumi, Georgia's largest Black Sea city, has long been culturally diverse. There are halal Indian restaurants, Turkish hairdressers and Thai massage parlors, as well as many Georgian businesses.

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Over the past year and a half, the mix has grown to include dozens of new cafes, bars and other establishments opened by Russians who fled after the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. In the colorful Batumi coloring, new Russian spots are relatively invisible. The signs are usually in English, and if there is any indication of nationality, it is the Ukrainian flag flown in solidarity. You can recognize them mainly by their trendy interior design or perhaps their long menu of craft beers or exotic coffees.

Inconspicuous as they may be, these recent visits have stirred up Batumi. For many Georgians, the new Russian business represents economic expansion from unfriendly territories.

The Russians, who flooded Batumi along with a large number of Belarusians and Ukrainians, quickly settled in. They have created what is largely a parallel economy that includes not only cafes and bars, but also beauty salons, handymen, yoga studios and real estate agencies that are run by Russians and cater to the city's new residents.

"City within a City"

Many Batumi residents see this as a threat.

The new business ventures are “a city within a city or a country within a country,” said Irma Dimitradze, a journalist with the local news agency Batumelebi. “You can go there and forget you’re in Georgia,” she adds.

For many in Batumi, the new Russians are representatives of a state they see as their enemy: Georgia and Russia fought a war in 2008, and Moscow continues to support Georgia's two breakaway territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Tensions have risen further since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, forcing hundreds of thousands of Russians to flee their country, many of whom went to Georgia.

Batumelebi and other local media wrote several revelations about Batumi's new Russian businesses. Investigations have found that many of the businesses appear to have violated laws requiring businesses in Georgia to serve customers in the Georgian language (or, theoretically, in Abkhaz - the other state language - in accordance with the Georgian Constitution).

The revelations have borne fruit. The Georgian National Competition Agency (GNCA), the body tasked with enforcing the language law, announced on August 1 that it had launched an investigation into 11 Batumi businesses that allegedly violated the law. The announcement added that the number of businesses "may increase".

Dimitradze, citing her sources at the agency, said the businesses were run by Russians.

Oriental Bakery is owned by Georgian Raul Putladze, who said he hired Belarusian barista Alexei Losev after he couldn't find a Georgian for the job. Many young people in Batumi study outside the city, so its target workforce is small. As a result, he chose Losev, who worked as a kindergarten teacher in Belarus and then fled with his family to Batumi shortly after the start of the war, which was supported by the Belarusian government. “We didn’t know if Belarus was going to get involved in the war, but we wanted to leave before it happened,” Losev said.

Asked about the incident with the water delivery man, Putladze defended Losev, explaining that the barista learns Georgian and can do most of the work in this language.

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He said one journalist repeatedly entered the café to try to expose Losev's imperfect Georgian language skills, such as filming the barista, asking tricky vocabulary questions and interrogating him about the ingredients of all the cakes on the menu.

Overall, however, Putladze said he approved of the effort to enforce the language law. “When you come to a country, you need to talk to the locals and understand what they are saying to you,” he said. He accused the government of being too "vague" about the rules to allow virtually anyone to start a business.

But there were too many journalistic revelations, he said, adding that he suspected that the journalist who visited his establishment most likely worked for a publication in Tbilisi, not Batumi. “People in Tbilisi are much more aggressive on this issue. In Batumi, such aggression is not observed... Here people take it seriously, but without much aggression,” he says.

Atmosphere of the city

Many of Batumi's recent arrivals agree that ethnic tensions are lower here than in Tbilisi, where anti-Russian graffiti is everywhere in the city center and the Russian presence is a source of regular controversy.

The polite standard for Russians in Tbilisi is to first try to communicate in English, which is not the norm in Batumi.

“Batumi is much more relaxed about these things,” said Nikita, a Belarusian tech worker from Batumi, who asked not to be named for fear of publicity in his home country, “where people can go to jail for any thing.”

“In Tbilisi you need to ask what language to speak. Here you can simply speak Russian, and I have never encountered a bad reaction because of this,” he said. — After a month in Batumi, I already felt like a local. Only I don’t speak Georgian.”

Many Georgians in Batumi feel that the newly arrived Russian-speakers feel too comfortable.

“The atmosphere in the city has changed,” says Batumi guide Salome Gorgiladze. In the city's Central Park, she gestured to other visitors. “They’re not from Georgia, they’re not from Georgia,” she said. “Sometimes if you sit down and listen, you hear more Russian than Georgian or any other language.”

She remembered that her grandmother spoke, in addition to fluent Georgian and Russian, a little Armenian, Greek and Turkish, because she had neighbors of all these nationalities.

“Batumi has always been a cosmopolitan city, so it is not unusual for us that foreigners come here and we hear foreign languages,” she said. What has changed, she says, is the size of the new Russian-speaking population. “Now they dominate. That’s the difference,” says Salome.

Fight for identity

Batumi has long been a subject of concern about its identity.

Until 1878, the city was part of the Ottoman Empire. The population of the surrounding region of Adjara was mainly composed of Georgians who were Muslims and spoke Turkish in addition to Georgian. After the Ottomans ceded Ajaria to the Russian Empire, a significant number of Armenians, Greeks and Russians also appeared in Batumi.

The city continued to be contested by the Ottomans during World War I. The Turkish-Soviet Kars Treaty of 1921, which established the mutual border of the two states, provided for the granting of autonomous status to Adzharia based on its Muslim identity.

Although its Muslim character has been steadily declining for decades, Adjara has retained its status as "another territory". Mikheil Saakashvili, who came to power after the Rose Revolution of 2003, failed to regain control of the central government in Adjara.

Under Saakashvili, Batumi witnessed an ambitious urban renewal program that consciously sought to create a more European identity for the city, razing the Soviet school to the ground and replacing it with a pseudo-Italian square, and erecting monuments that highlight the region's ancient ties to Greece.

The converted city proved especially popular with Turkish tourists, and by the late 2010s, part of the old city was filled with Turkish restaurants and the Turkish government began to exert influence in the region, causing backlash among conservative Georgians. At some point, the right-wing Alliance of Patriots party set up billboards depicting Ajaria "occupied" by Turkey.

Influx of Russians

Now it's up to the Russians.

It is difficult to get data on the influx of Russians, but Gorgiladze estimates that there may be as many as 180 Russians in Batumi, a city of 000, according to official Georgian statistics. A study by the National Bank of Georgia found that the proportion of Russians buying property in Batumi has skyrocketed since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, far exceeding that in Tbilisi. Russians made up 30 percent of property buyers in Batumi in November 000, according to a bank study.

Batumi and nearby beach resorts are popular summer destinations for Russians and other post-Soviet tourists, as well as Georgians. The share of Russian tourists here has increased significantly this season.

Gorgiladze explained the Russian tourist boom by saying that war-related restrictions mean Russians have fewer opportunities to travel to other parts of the world. This, she said, has in turn turned away tourists who don't want to be around so many Russians while the war in Ukraine is still in full swing. There are many Georgians among them, which is a sensitive moment for many in Batumi.

Video footage of Russia's "capture" of Batumi has circulated on Georgian social media, but many here argue that the Russians are being persecuted for no reason.

“This is very unfair. There is also a lot of Russian business in Tbilisi, and there are more Russians there than in Batumi. But they attack us: “You all love Russians,” said Gorgiladze. She said it was like a Turkish panic.

"People weren't even in Batumi and they said, 'Oh, this is now a Turkish city, we've lost Batumi.' And now they say again: “We lost Batumi,” she added.

Gorgiladze admitted that she may be in the minority among Batumi residents, many of whom applaud the Russian boom for the economic benefits it has brought.

Views on the problem are in contact with domestic politics. Supporters of the ruling Georgian Dream party tend to view Russia as an economic opportunity and are more likely to view Turkey as a historical enemy, while opposition supporters are more anti-Russian. Opposition politicians sought to introduce a visa regime for Russians and limit the purchase of real estate by Russians.

Gorgiladze ridiculed the idea that the Turks could pose a threat. “We have a bit of a mythological idea about them: that what happened 10 centuries ago is just as important as what happened 10 years ago,” she said. “The Turks left Batumi in 1878.”

And she was frustrated that the government didn't seem interested in cracking down on Russian business, despite the GNCA investigation.

“As a citizen, I don’t feel like they will ever fix this issue. There is no will from the government,” she said.

Tensions around the growing Russian presence escalated sharply at the end of July. A Russian cruise ship carrying some outspoken war supporters has called at the port of Batumi. The liner was met by protesters, some of whom threw eggs at it.

Many Russians in Batumi said the episode did not reflect their experience in the city. The appearance of the ship in Batumi looked like a deliberate provocation on the Russian side, and the number of Georgian protesters was relatively small, said Katya Vesna, host of the popular Telegram channel for Russian speakers in Batumi.

She, like many newcomers to Batumi, said her experience in Georgia was positive. Things are different in her home country: Last December, she was tricked into appearing on a Russian state television program in which interviews with her and other Russians in Georgia were selectively edited to make their life here look as miserable as possible.

She recalled an incident shortly after her arrival, when she and several friends were caught in one of Batumi's frequent downpours. The Georgian, seeing them at his door, invited them into the house. She took it as a symbol: "All the people who now have a business here understand that Georgia is now our roof - we no longer have a roof at home."

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The cruise controversy has attracted widespread media attention in Georgia. The GNCA statement was released the day after the liner's second and final port call. “My personal opinion,” Dimitradze said, “the timing was not accidental.”

Neglect of the language laws of Georgia

In 2015, Georgia passed a law requiring that signs and advertisements for businesses in Georgian be at least as visible as in any other language. Another consumer rights law passed in 2022 requires businesses to offer services in the state language. The law clarifies that ignorance of the state language is not grounds for refusing to provide services in this language.

The GNCA investigates violations of language laws by businesses based on recommendations it receives from the public, and then works with businesses to get them to comply with the law, said Sergo Sanikidze, head of the agency's consumer protection division.

According to him, if the business continues not to comply with the law, it can be fined.

Compulsory service laws in Georgian are being violated everywhere, and not just in Russian-run businesses. In the old city of Batumi, the likelihood that a client will be served in Georgian in a Turkish restaurant or Thai salon is no higher than in a Russian cafe.

Sanikidze said that "the agency strives to ensure fair treatment and protection of consumer rights, regardless of the language used in the provision of services."

But many in Batumi are glad that Russian business is now under control.

Many Turkish establishments, for example, pose no threat, journalist Dimitradze says. “Türkiye is a different case. Türkiye is our friend. There was a feud with Turkey even before it became Turkey, so it's a completely different situation,” she said. The focus on Russian business “has nothing to do with racism. These are real security threats.”

Some Russian business owners argue that the law is unreasonable. Aleksey Antonenko, a Russian who has lived in Georgia since 2015, opened the Back Door bar in Batumi shortly after the war began. He aims to make the bar a "safe place" for all newcomers to Batumi. There are Ukrainians and Belarusians in the state, and at the weekend there was an evening of Ukrainian-language comedy.

But he hired his first Georgian bartender only a week earlier. He searched, but until recently could not find anyone qualified, as he said. It doesn't have a menu in Georgian. Given that the list of proposals changes frequently, he constantly had to enlist editing help from outside. As a result, the menu is only in English. “It should be either in all three languages ​​(English, Georgian and Russian), or only in English,” he reasoned.

Likewise, the signs at the doors of a bar located near the Batumi waterfront were only in English. He admitted that he had broken the law, but said that his target clientele, including Georgians, still spoke English. He estimates that the proportion of Georgian patrons at the bar has risen from about 10 percent initially to about 20 percent, and said there were no language conflicts, except for occasional provocateurs who came to speak out on the matter. He said that the rules are meaningless: "The market should decide for itself."

As one bartender at a Russian bar in Batumi put it, asking not to be named because he is not authorized to speak for the bar: "There is law, and there is reality."

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