Month: September 2026

Russian citizen Aleksandr Popov was sentenced to 15 days in detention and deportation from Georgia after urinating from a balcony. After being confronted, he responded by saying ‘Glory to Russia’.

The incident took place in Tbilisi on Monday. According to witness Teona Gholodze, the man, intoxicated, had been sitting at the same café as she and others before the incident. She said that the man later left the café, went up onto a balcony overlooking it, and began urinating from there.

Gholodze reported the incident in a TikTok video on Tuesday, noting that she called the police afterward. She also attended Wednesday’s court hearing, where she testified before the judge.

According to RFE/RL, Popov said that he was visiting a friend and his defence was that the toilet in the flat had been occupied for a long time, so he urinated from the balcony instead. Judge Tornike Kapanadze responded that ‘in a normal society, this behaviour cannot be justified for that reason’.

The footage of the incident posted by Gholodze apparently shows the aftermath of the urination, where the man can be heard saying ‘Glory to Russia’ twice from the balcony. According to Gholodze, he initially used the phrase when she asked him from below why he was urinating from the balcony, and said it a second time after she told him that the police had been called.

The footage she posted also showed Popov after he had gone downstairs, where he was confronted by people at the scene. In response, he said that the toilet was occupied, adding that he was ready to offer a ‘sincere apology’.

Additional footage seen by OC Media shows Popov lying on the ground, with one of the men at the scene briefly pressing a knee against him.

Gholodze said he fell while trying to flee and was caught by the men who were there.

‘Then he started rolling around on the ground himself, as if he had been beaten, and later focused on that, claiming that he had been beaten. In reality, no one beat him. We were simply trying to detain him until the police arrived’, she told TV Pirveli on Wednesday.

At the court hearing, Popov said that he regretted what had happened and that it would never happen again. RFE/RL reported that he stated he owned an apartment in Tbilisi, where he intended to live, and asked to be given time to finish renovating it.

Ultimately, Popov’s plea did not help him. In addition to detention and deportation, he was also banned from entering the country for three years.

He was charged under two articles of Georgia’s code of administrative offences: one concerning petty hooliganism, and the other covering sexual harassment, unwanted sexual conduct in public places that violates a person’s dignity or is intended to do so, or creates an intimidating, humiliating, or offensive environment.