Kulanin, a Russian citizen and former Navalny campaign volunteer in Rostov-on-Don, was sentenced to two years in 2025 and pardoned by President Kavelashvili last week with eight others. The pardon freed him into a migration cell. A ticket to Armenia bought by activists for 1 September expired while the interior ministry's migration department asked the court to remove him from the country.
As soon as the order arrives, he will leave on the nearest flight.
The department's motion, as Meduza describes it from Paper Kartuli, asked for his removal to the country of origin and, in the same filing, for seven days of voluntary departure to any country. Granted in full, Sova reports. The practical result is the one his lawyers had argued for: no handover to Russia, and a departure of his own choosing.
The order that he may leave Georgia voluntarily within seven days has not reached the migration service, his lawyer Tsiala Ratiashvili told Kavkaz-Uzel on Friday. As soon as the order arrives, he will leave on the nearest flight. Kavkaz-Uzel names the judge as Leila Poladashvili.
The case had two clocks. Under the 30 August ruling, the migration centre could hold him for up to three months; an expulsion order, as Kavkaz-Uzel set out the procedure on 2 September, would have carried a five-year entry ban. The seven-day order retires both, once it is delivered.
The protest movement had made him its case. Wednesday's rally, the 644th day of the protest, carried his departure to a third country among its demands beside the Buava investigation. Georgia's government has not commented on the ruling in the reads.