Georgia: Blogging from Poti

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is once again blogging from Georgian towns under Russian military occupation. The station’s Tea Absaridze is providing daily updates on the situation in the strategic Black Sea port of Poti, currently controlled by the Russian military despite a ceasefire agreement requiring Moscow to withdraw its troops.

The media blog reports that looting by drunken Russian soldiers is widespread and there have been some cases of violence towards citizens and journalists alike.

Authorities here say they’re trying to assess the extent of the theft and damage from that armored raid by drunken soldiers on the Nikora meat-processing plant (see this morning’s post).

[…]

I was awakened very early this morning by a phone call from a colleague from TV station Rustavi 2. She said she’d gotten word that Russian soldiers had stormed a meat-processing plant that belongs to food producer Nikora. (That company is widely regarded as one of independent Georgia’s major commercial success stories.)

The mayor of Poti, Vano Saghinadze, says he’s already visited the plant and employees there gave him an account of what happened. The workers say that around 9 p.m. last night, Russian troops simply rolled their armored truck onto the factory premises. They say the soldiers were drunk and very aggressive, shouting and swearing at everyone. And it was obvious that they were hungry — they took all the sausages and cold cuts that they could get their hands on. The Russians didn’t damage any equipment, apparently and they left as suddenly as they’d come.

Mayor Saghinadze speculated that those 60 or so troops at those two Russian two checkpoints are not getting new supplies and are running low on rations.

[…]

I found out details about the man who had been beaten up by Russian forces. His name is Ramaz Zhvania, and he is 28 years old. The incident happened at one of the checkpoints — apparently Zhvania was walking near the checkpoint, and the Russians, for some reason, didn’t like this. First they fired several shots, and then caught him and savagely beat him up. Zhvania was taken to hospital, where he was examined by a neurosurgeon.

According to the doctor, Levan Shurghaia, Zhvania’s condition is grave — his neck and skull are fractured, and he is in need of further tests and procedures. Family members want to have him moved to a hospital in Kutaisi, a city between Poti and Tbilisi. Apart from journalists, it seems the Russian forces are also forbidding regular citizens from going near any of their checkpoints.

[…]

Yesterday they detained some AP reporters for a couple of hours. They were very aggressive toward the reporters, destroying their equipment and shouting that everyone who would try to film them would share the same fate. In the end, the reporters were released, and they went to Batumi.

Behind the Poti Lines is here.