Record crowds are crossing the Russia–Georgia border at Verkhny Lars. Here’s what the numbers actually show.
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“Record passenger traffic at Verkhny Lars: more than 20,000 passengers crossed the checkpoint in a single day. Heavy tourist traffic has brought with it a record number of passenger cars. […] The same trend has held for several days now: on August 15 and 16, more than 19,000 people passed through the checkpoint each day. Current figures significantly exceed those for comparable periods in previous years,” Russia’s Federal Customs Service said on the evening of August 18.
Is that true?
Most likely, yes. The customs service’s statement indicates that more than 20,000 people crossed the border on August 17 (the agency didn’t yet have complete data for August 18 when the release went out). The statement doesn’t specify how many people crossed into Georgia and how many into Russia, but it’s clear that the figure covers crossings in both directions.
Data from Georgia’s Interior Ministry also backs up the Russian figures. At 4 p.m. Moscow time on August 19, the ministry issued a statement saying reports in “media outlets and social media” that “20,000 Russian citizens” had crossed the Georgian border “over the past 24 hours” were inaccurate.
According to the ministry’s figures, just over 16,000 citizens of various countries crossed the border at Verkhny Lars in a 24-hour period — presumably from 4 p.m. on August 18 to 4 p.m. on August 19, Moscow time — with 7,880 headed to Georgia and 8,406 to Russia. Those numbers are broadly comparable to the Russian customs service’s statistics.
So were there long lines?
Long lines are routine at the Russia-Georgia border, in part because the crossing can be temporarily closed when the weather turns bad, as happened on August 13. Posts in Telegram chats about Verkhny Lars indicate that there were lines in recent days, too: from August 15 to 19, the morning wait ran about three to five hours, though crossings went much faster in the evening. By the evening of August 19, the chats reported no major lines.
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