Stroll around the elegant capitals of Georgia and Armenia and you could be almost anywhere in Europe. The grand boulevards, familiar luxury brands, fast-food outlets, smart restaurants and gridlocked traffic suggest that you might be in Hungary or the Czech Republic.
Only the cruciform shape of the domed and ancient churches place you elsewhere; that, and in Georgia’s Tbilisi at least, the ubiquitous anti-Russian, anti-Putin graffiti.
The Ukraine conflict has meant large numbers of Russians have arrived in Georgia – not to everyone’s delight. ‘What makes them so maddening is their arrogance,’ my hostess said one night.
‘A friend of mine lent a Russian refugee family her flat – for free. But when she went round with home baked bread to welcome them, she was told they were busy and to leave it on the kitchen table.
‘They treated her like a maid.’
Equally frustrating, apparently, is the Russian visitors’ lack of awareness that Georgia has itself suffered creeping territorial incursions orchestrated by the Kremlin. Both Abkhazia and South Ossetia – 20 per cent of the country – are now, in effect, Russian satraps following local revolts widely suspected to have been masterminded in Moscow.
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