About half a million Russian citizens entered Georgia in July-September

Russians in Georgia

From July to September 2022, the largest number of visitors entered Georgia, with 443,600 people arrived from the Russian Federation. This is 27.7% of the total number of all who came to Georgia. Armenia ranks second at 15.3% and Turkey ranks third at 13.7%.

A distinction must be made between visitors, travelers, and tourists.

● A traveler is a person who moves voluntarily both within one country and abroad.
In other words, this is any person who moves from their country with the primary purpose is travel by any method of transport.

● A visitor is a traveler who travels from their home or familiar environment to another location for a period not exceeding twelve months without the intent of obtaining a job and settling in the host country;

● A tourist is any category of visitors who stay at a destination for one or more days.

At this stage, experts explain, migrants in Georgia are not separated from tourists. Consequently, the citizens of Russia and Belarus who came to Georgia in connection with the war that began in Ukraine are included in the tourism statistics.

It should be noted that in the pre-pandemic period for the same months of 2019, the largest number of visitors were also from Russia at 378,200, which accounted for 24.9% of the total number of guests.

In the third quarter of 2022, the total number of foreign visitors reached 1.6 million, which is two and a half times more than in the same period of the previous year.

The majority of visitors, 47.3%, belong to the 31 to 50 age group. The number of women is 44.9% of the total number of visitors.

• Most Russian companies registered in Georgia after February
• Real estate prices in Georgia increase by 10.7%

According to the Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), in the first seven months of 2022, a total of 1,598 people received Georgian citizenship, of whom 723 are Russian citizens. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, 551 Russian citizens and eight Ukrainian citizens received Georgian citizenship as an exception.

According to the same IDFI data, from the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to August 31, 2022, 45,349 Russian citizens opened new accounts in Georgian commercial banks. As explained by the organization, the opening of such a number of accounts suggests that this represents a migration of Russian citizens, and not just a tourist trip to Georgia. The NGO requested data from the National Bank.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian citizens have purchased 2,964 apartments and 37.9 hectares of land in Georgia, according to the Batumelebi magazine. Russian citizens who entered Georgia have registered 711 legal entities, and 9,789 Russian citizens have already registered as individual entrepreneurs.

Russians in Georgia