Since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, more than 100,000 Russians have crossed the border with Georgia. While their country devolved into autocracy and spurned the West, their small southern neighbor seemed to be moving in the opposite direction'toward democracy and membership in the European Union. Soon, however, the authoritarianism they'd tried to escape began spilling over the border. The Kremlin appeared to exert greater influence over Georgia's leaders, and Russian refugees saw their adoptive home come to resemble their native one. 'Repressive laws that Georgia adopts are copied from the Kremlin's,' Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, a human-rights activist who has served multiple prison sentences in Russia, told me, and Moscow's brand of oppression is 'catching up with Russian exiles.' In 2006, Dmitriyevsky became the first activist that the Russian regime convicted under its so-called counter-extremism laws. But he didn't decide to...
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