Crossing by land from Georgia into Russia 2022
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 7 Aug, 2023
- |
As Peter has already said, the border is currently open and there are thousands of Russians trying to cross from Russia to Georgia. I expect that the opposite direction will be simpler, although it can also be that all the border guards are occupied with people coming from Russia. So you may have to wait even if there is nobody else coming from Georgia.
A bigger problem may be accommodation. I think that accommodation on both sides of the border is very expensive now, and may not even be available at all.
At the same time, I think you can find some advantages in the current situation. For example, you may easily find transportation to the border in Georgia, and from the border in Russia, because the demand is very high in the opposite direction. Taxis and buses apparently go almost empty in your direction. So overall I think one may say that currently the situation is even more favorable for crossing into Russia than it usually was.
However, you may face problems coming back. I really doubt that Russia will close the border to foreigners, but the lines may be horribly long (think several days!)
At the same time, your statement "most inbound international flights to Russia have stopped" is not quite true. The flights from Europe and USA have stopped. But there are plenty of flights from Turkey, UAE, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and many other other countries. Moreover, I think these flights inbound to Russia should be rather cheap now because there is high demand on flights from Russia (and prices are very high). So the airlines may be selling flights to Russia very cheap because they need to move the aircraft there anyway.
If you give more details about where you need to travel to and what passport you have (as a separate question), I think people here will be glad to find alternate routes.
According to this reuters report from a week ago, there are restrictions on cars entering North Ossetia due to the number of Russians who are fleeing the country. However, it also says
the ban would not apply to residents or tourists, or to cars entering
from Georgia or its breakaway South Ossetia region.
So this implies that you can cross there – but that was a week ago.
But given the large numbers of Russians who are leaving via that border crossing, I would not expect it to be an easy crossing to make (the article mentioned 20,000 people in 2 days)
This site appears to show the current conditions and estimated wait times at this crossing. (I didn’t fully look as I am not removing my ad blocker for this site)
And this article from 3 days ago talks more about current conditions on the Russian side of the border, and mentions rampant corruption by the border guards – which you may have to deal with when leaving the country.
- Can I use a one-way ticket to come to the UK? Or do I need to show a return ticket to be able to get in?
- How much would an airline be fined if the immigration officers of the destination country deny me entry?
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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