Mourners at a funeral in Mejvriskhevi. The boundary line with South Ossetia passes along the edge of the cemetery. Many Georgians who venture onto occupied territory, intentionally or unintentionally, have been arrested by FSB troops, with a fine the most common outcome, although long prison sentences are often meted out by the courts in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia.

In one example from July 2020, Zaza Gakheladze was shot and detained by Russian forces who had encroached on Tbilisi-controlled territory and was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison. The Georgian Patriarch, Ilia II, appealed to his Russian counterpart, Archbishop Kirill, for Gakheladze’s release, which came in July 2021.

Bishop Isaiah of Nikozi & Tskhinvali enters Nikozi Cathedral at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy.

The Divine Liturgy lasts approximately three hours. Benches around the edge of the Cathedral provide seating for 15-20 people. Otherwise, its standing room only. In the winter, with snow falling, it can be bitterly cold inside the Cathedral, the only respite for some a small electric heater that is used to heat blocks of incense.

A villager drives his tractor along the southern bank of the Enguri River in Orsantia. These small tractors are a common sight on the roads of rural Georgia as a relatively cheap way to transport goods and people around villages. Those who can’t afford cars will also use them to travel longer distances.

Hazelnuts are the major crop grown in Orsantia, although the amount produced has declined in recent years due to the spread of the brown marmorated stink bug, which is alleged to have been introduced to the region with the importation of construction materials from Italy before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

All of the destinations shown here, on a sign above the road which leads from Zugdidi to the Enguri Bridge, are located in Abkhazia and inaccessible for the vast majority of Georgians.

Gagra, a resort town on the Black Sea coast near the Russian border, was the site of a 1992 battle with Georgian troops facing an allied force of Abkhaz secessionists and militants from Russia’s North Caucasus republics, commanded by Shamil Basayev.

Thousands of ethnic Georgian civilians fled Gagra, and those who stayed behind were subject to war crimes including rape and summary execution. In one case, victims were allegedly decapitated before their heads were used as footballs.

Zaira Jigania, a displaced person from Abkhazia, lives alone in a single room in the same building as Zugdidi council’s cleaning department. She has a small vegetable patch and a chicken coop which keep her busy, although her life is a lonely one.

She has spent years fighting to get her own apartment but hasn’t succeeded yet. Corruption in the council means that people pay bribes to obtain ownership of apartments they aren’t entitled to before renting them out privately.

Zaira has no family left. One of her sons, Ucha Benia, fought in the 1992-1993 Abkhaz war and died in 2004. A photograph of him in uniform can be seen on the television.

A group of 5- and 6-year-olds watch Tom and Jerry at a pre-school run by the Danish Refugee Council for children of IDPs in Military Town, Senaki. This IDP settlement has around 3,000 residents and was formerly accommodation for Georgian troops stationed at a nearby military base.

Around 250,000 ethnic Georgians were forcibly displaced from Abkhazia after the 1992-1993 war, with fewer than 50,000 left in the occupied region. Nearly all of those who remain live in the town of Gali and surrounding villages.

Dogs are able to move freely at the Pakhulani-Saberio crossing, which acts as a secondary crossing to the bridge over the Enguri River to the southwest.

A checkpoint manned by Russian FSB troops checks the documents of those crossing. As no vehicles can pass here, people have to unload goods at one end, carry them across and load them onto vehicles on the other side.

There is no Georgian police presence at the crossing point, although traffic is controlled by a police post two miles down the road.

European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) monitors Tamás Fekete and Roger Brandin survey fishing boats south and north of the Abkhaz boundary line in Anaklia.

The Mission was founded in September 2008 after the war between Georgia and Russia and has three field offices outside Tbilisi. The Mission describes its mandate as follows:

- to ensure that there is no return to hostilities;

- to facilitate the resumption of a safe and normal life for the local communities living on both sides of the Administrative Boundary Lines (ABL) with Abkhazia and South Ossetia;

- to build confidence among the conflict parties;

- to inform EU policy in Georgia and the wider region

A Russian-built lookout post in the hills north of Mejvriskhevi, on the boundary line with South Ossetia.

Similar structures, both covert - hidden on the edge of a dense forest - and overt - out in the open as with this hut - have been constructed all along the line to act as a deterrent to local Georgians.

Valeri and Nikolozi Khupatsaria play as their new puppy explores their garden in Orsantia, directly beside the Enguri River.

Their father, Isako, works as a builder in nearby Zugdidi. With the birth of Valeri, the youngest of three boys, an extension to their small house became necessary, although progress is irregular due to lack of money.

As with many Georgians living in rural areas, the family owns a cow which the boys’ grandmother milks by hand to provide them with milk and cheese, as well as a small agricultural plot where various crops are grown, both for their own consumption and for sale.

As the sun sets, a house in the village of Otobaia in Abkhazia can be seen across the Enguri River from Tbilisi-controlled territory.

Unlike most of Georgia’s divided landscapes, on this small stretch of the river people can witness up close the daily lives of those on the opposite side. They can see their former neighbours working, celebrating, and mourning.

In many cases there are friendships that have been lost, but often the houses of ethnic Georgians who were forced to leave Abkhazia were looted, burned, or expropriated and inhabited by those they thought were their friends.

Nikusha, left, and his cousins Andria and Saba pick alucha plums from their garden in Ditsi. They are eaten raw or used to make a popular Georgian sauce called tkemali.

Ditsi is one of the villages where locals have experienced Russia’s ‘creeping occupation’. Overnight, Russian troops will move or construct new border infrastructure further inside Tbilisi-controlled territory, often cutting people off from their fields, family, and friends without warning.

A branch line of the Transcaucasian Railway once ran from Gori to Tskhinvali, the de-facto capital of South Ossetia. It closed in the early 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, with the eruption of the first armed conflict between Ossetian militias and the Georgian government.

During a period of relative peace in 2004 efforts were made to reopen the line to Tskhinvali, with funding from the EU, but they didn’t come to fruition.

Similarly, the railway line that ran from Abkhazia to the rest of Georgia closed during the 1992-1993 Abkhaz War after the only railway bridge across the Enguri River was destroyed.

Georgian police officer Rajden Kapanadze, right, and his partner peer into a dry riverbed on the outskirts of Adzvi, which borders occupied South Ossetia. The water level in rivers throughout Georgia is at its lowest in autumn, while meltwater from the Caucasus Mountains often causes flooding in the spring when combined with heavy rainfall.

Most Georgian police officers based in villages near the occupied territories are armed with Soviet rifles like the AK-74, a successor of the famous AK-47, while those who are stationed in frontline positions are more likely to carry Western weapons such as M4 rifles. The switch to Western equipment which is taking place throughout Georgia’s police and military has been accelerated by large amounts of aid from the US.

A group of students from Tsalenjikha take part in a tour of the Enguri Dam.

In November 2021 large parts of the site were opened up to tourists, with a guided tour lasting about two hours.

The Enguri Dam is a popular stop off for tourists on the road to Svaneti, a region high in the Caucasus Mountains next to the Russian border. Svaneti is home to the village of Ushguli, which at nearly 7,000 feet is one of the highest inhabited villages in Europe.

A mile lies between the checkpoints on either side of the Enguri Bridge. For the infirm or those with too much to carry, the UN refugee agency operates free minibuses, with the private minibuses that supplement them charging 1 lari (~30p) for the crossing.

Private vehicles registered to residents of Abkhazia are also allowed to cross, although only those that possess number plates issued by the de-facto authorities in Sokhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, are permitted on the Abkhaz side.

This necessitates the removal of Georgian plates and the installation of Abkhaz plates, and vice versa, as part of the crossing process.

A man gestures while talking about Joseph Stalin in front of a statue of the Soviet leader in Mejvriskhevi. Born in nearby Gori in 1878, Stalin still has many supporters in his homeland and souvenirs containing his likeness can be found in gift shops throughout Georgia.

A statue of Stalin once took pride of place in Gori’s main square, which is still called Stalin Square. Although the statue was removed in 2010, what was presumably a replica featured in a 2019 episode of The Grand Tour where Clarkson, Hammond and May also visited the boundary line with South Ossetia in Khurvaleti and met Data Vanishvili, who woke up one morning to find Russian troops had installed barbed wire on his land, cutting his house off from the rest of the village.

5-year-old Giorgi Ekhvaia, left, plays with friends beside a branch of the Enguri River in Khurcha. The opposite bank, just a few feet away, is occupied Abkhazia. A large Russian base has been built in Nabakevi on the other side of the river, and cameras and sensors have been installed by Russian FSB border guards to detect anyone who tries to cross.

Khurcha was the location of one of the busiest crossings from Abkhazia before it was closed by the Russians in 2017. One Thursday afternoon in May 2016, 31-year-old Giga Otkhozoria tried to transport food across the small concrete bridge to his aunt’s funeral. An Abkhaz border guard asked for a bribe, and when Otkhozoria refused he was chased across the bridge onto Georgian-controlled territory and shot dead.

Residents of Abkhazia walk towards the occupied territory across the Enguri Bridge. The vast majority of ethnic Georgians who remain in Abkhazia are living there on residence permits, which are renewed at the whim of the de-facto authorities in Sokhumi.

A very small minority hold Abkhaz passports, which are only recognised by the five countries that see Abkhazia as an independent country:

Russia

Nicaragua

Venezuela

Nauru

Syria

The sign marks the most northerly point on the Black Sea coast that is controlled by the Georgians. Beyond it, occupied Abkhazia.

A no man’s land of two miles leads to a Russian base, from where regular patrols monitor the boundary line for ‘illegal’ crossings by Georgians.

The resort town of Anaklia on Georgian-controlled territory, immediately adjacent to the line, contains hotels and guesthouses for the thousands who flock here in the summer, as well as a water park.

Religious icons in the apartment of elderly couple Sergo Zughbaia and Natela Benia in Zugdidi. More than 80% of the population are members of the Georgian Orthodox Church and religion plays an important role in the life of most Georgians.

Sergo and Natela were displaced from Abkhazia during the conflict in the early 1990s, and lived in a former hospital building for the first 27 years of their displacement. They were provided with an apartment in a new IDP settlement three years ago, and although they are grateful they believe that the local government only pretends to care about the needs of IDPs in the lead-up to elections, after which they are forgotten.

Border infrastructure on the western edge of Adzvi with a Russian base dominating the hill behind.

Green signs like the one on the left are ubiquitous on South Ossetia’s boundary line, having been installed by FSB border guards.

The most recent iteration reads, in English and Georgian:

ATTENTION!

STATE BORDER!

PASSAGE IS FORBIDDEN!

Members of the Nikozi Cathedral choir practice at the village’s art school. The school was founded by Bishop Isaiah, who worked as an animator before joining the church, in 2009.

It provides an after-school education in ceramics, embroidery, animation and music, as well as extracurricular English and Russian language classes.

The school is also home to the Nikozi International Animation Film Festival which sees guests from around the world converge on this small village, located next to the occupied South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, every autumn.

The 270-metre tall Enguri Dam was built over a period of 26 years from 1961 to 1987. It redirects water from the Enguri River, which rises in the high Caucasus Mountains near the Russian border, to hydroelectric power plants located in occupied Abkhazia. The resulting electricity is shared between Abkhazia and Georgian-controlled territory, with each side relying on the other. The combined efforts produce nearly half of Georgia’s electricity needs.

Residents of Abkhazia do not pay for electricity received from the arrangement, which caused cryptocurrency mining operations to become popular in the economically-challenged region. This in turn caused an energy crisis in 2021 when the Enguri complex closed temporarily for repairs.

Nikozi climbing club is located in the grounds of the village’s art school, where the outdoor climbing wall is often busy with children from Nikozi and the surrounding area.

Many attend simply for something to do or to socialise with friends, while a group of more advanced climbers take part in competitions throughout Georgia.

Nikozi was heavily bombed during the 2008 war. The climbing club’s spare equipment is kept in a crate that was once used to store rocket-propelled grenades.

Abandoned houses in no man’s land on the boundary line with South Ossetia. The Russian border guard base near Bershueti sits behind them.

These bases serve several purposes - as living quarters for the FSB border guards who patrol the boundary line, as a base of operations in case of the recurrence of active conflict, and as the home of listening posts of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. The listening posts are intended to intercept the phone calls and texts of everyone in the area and provide intelligence on Georgian police and military activity.

Dato Imerlishvili in his apple orchard in the East Prone River valley, below the village of Dirbi.

The Shida Kartli region of central Georgia is famous for its apples, and every September the roads around Dirbi, as well as on the wide plain between Gori and South Ossetia, are filled with lorries carrying the harvest.

In 2018 Ioane Okhanishvili, the priest of St George’s Church in Dirbi, was detained by Russian border guards and held for 12 hours in South Ossetia’s de-facto capital Tskhinvali. Short detentions are often used as a projection of power by Russian forces acting in concert with the South Ossetian authorities.

A cow stands near the bridge which formerly provided a crossing point between Orsantia on Georgian-controlled territory and Otobaia in Abkhazia. The crossing was closed by the Russian military in 2016.

With only two official crossings currently open, ethnic Georgians living in Abkhazia’s Gali district often attempt to cross the river on foot, leading to many deaths.

In August 2020 65-year-old Otar Jobava drowned near Orsantia, and in April 2021 a guide and three members of one family drowned further upstream after being chased by Russian border guards with dogs. Water levels increased due to heavy rain as they were crossing, sweeping all four away.

A reporter for Imedi television does a piece to camera before an Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) meeting in no man’s land between South Ossetia and Tbilisi-controlled territory.

The monthly meetings in Ergneti are facilitated by the EUMM and OSCE, and bring together representatives of the Georgian government and the de-facto government of South Ossetia to discuss concerns raised by both sides. Irrigation of agricultural land, the illegal construction of border infrastructure by Russian forces, and the arbitrary detention of Georgians are among the issues discussed at IPRM meetings.