A public dispute has opened over traffic at the Upper Lars checkpoint, the main land crossing on the Russia–Georgia border. Some media outlets and Telegram channels cite Russian customs data suggesting a sharp spike in arrivals, while Georgia's Interior Ministry says the figures are wrong and warns against spreading unverified claims.
What media and bloggers reported
Russian outlets and several Georgian Telegram channels said that on 18 August more than 20,000 people crossed into Georgia through Upper Lars, with more than 19,000 reported on 15 and 16 August. Those numbers were described as well above levels seen in previous years, fuelling talk of an exceptional influx of Russian citizens.
The claims circulated widely online and were picked up across regional news feeds, often without independent confirmation from Georgian authorities.
Georgia's official response
The Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a statement rejecting the 20,000 figure as disinformation. It published statistics for the previous 24 hours at the same checkpoint:
- 7,880 foreign nationals entered Georgia
- 8,406 foreign nationals departed through Upper Lars
The ministry did not provide a nationality breakdown in the public statement. It asked the public not to share unverified information and said official data should be treated as the authoritative source on border movements.
Why the gap matters
Upper Lars is a sensitive barometer for travel between Russia and Georgia, and crossing numbers are often read as a signal of migration pressure or tourism flows. When social media figures diverge sharply from government statistics, authorities typically move quickly to counter narratives they see as misleading.
For now, the dispute rests on competing datasets: Russian customs figures cited by some outlets versus the Interior Ministry's published totals. Neither side's full methodology has been laid out in the public statements reviewed here.
