The Georgian village facing Russian ‘creeping occupation’ – By Clément Girardot (Al Jazeera) / July 3, 2022
Khurvaleti is increasingly affected by Russian forces demarcating the ‘border’ of breakaway state South Ossetia.
Khurvaleti, Georgia – When Gia Batonisashvili hears dogs barking, he knows “Russians are patrolling”. The troops patrol with their dog in what used to be his back garden. He lost this garden three years ago when Russian forces put up a barbed-wire fence behind his home. He can no longer access these grounds for fear of being arrested and accused of trespassing in another state.
Gia, 63, and his mother Nora, 81, live in a decaying house at the end of the only asphalt road that crosses Khurvaleti, a village almost surrounded by the Moscow-backed breakaway state of South Ossetia which borders Russia. Roughly 4km (2 miles) long and 2km (1 mile) wide, Khurvaleti juts into South Ossetia like a small peninsula.
It is located in a valley about 60km (37 miles) northwest of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and lies just a few kilometres from a major highway that connects the country’s east and west, and from the gas pipeline linking Azerbaijan to the Black Sea.
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