Thousands of Russians are hunting for apartments in Tbilisi and Yerevan - not because of a mobilisation order that's been signed, but because of one many fear is coming.
There has been no new draft decree out of Moscow. But talk of a fresh mobilisation, tied to Russia's State Duma elections next month, is already enough to push people out the door - and Georgia's capital is one of the first places they're looking to land.
According to the Russian investigative news outlet Vazhnye Istorii, demand for long-term rentals in Tbilisi from Russian citizens jumped by 20 to 30 per cent in mid-August compared with the same period last year. Average rents have followed suit, climbing to around $12.3 per square metre - more than two dollars higher than the year before.
Yerevan is seeing an even sharper rise, with demand up by as much as 35 per cent and local estate agents reporting several new enquiries every single day.
Talk to anyone running a housing-search chat group and you'll hear the same thing: Russians are reacting to the mobilisation fear in two completely different ways. Some are rushing to sign long-term leases now, hoping to lock in a price before any announcement sends rents even higher.
Others are doing the opposite, booking short rentals for one to three months, betting that any call-up won't actually land until after the Duma vote wraps up.
Either way, it's fear driving the decisions, not fact.
This rental surge isn't happening in a vacuum. It follows on from Russia's own customs service confirming record daily crossings at the Larsi checkpoint — as many as 20,000 people a day entering Georgia. That's a striking figure, and one Georgian officials have been quick to play down.
Levan Makhashvili, who chairs the parliamentary committee on European integration, dismissed the concerns outright, calling the whole thing a "storm in a teacup" whipped up by "idle politicians". He pointed to the numbers, arguing that more people are actually leaving Georgia than entering, and put the border traffic down to a perfectly ordinary summer tourist season across all of the country's crossings - land, air, the lot.
Officials can call it seasonal, but landlords who are struggling to keep pace with demand in a city that was already home to a large number of foreign residents even before this latest wave are living a different reality.
Whatever the political spin, the math on the ground is being written by anxiety over what might come next, not by anything Moscow has actually announced.
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