Baker Sergo Gornakashvili grew up near Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, haunted by echoes of the wars in nearby Chechnya, before trading his apron for a rifle and dying on Ukraine's front line.

His life and death aged 36 reflects Kyiv's battle for survival and the thunder of the 1990s conflicts in the Caucasus -- tremors of the geopolitical upheaval that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and continued with Moscow's pursuit of its lost glory.

"He witnessed many horrors, but he did not change much. He always remained smiling, kind, and loving," said his younger brother, Dimitri Gornakashvili. "No one could make him repeat a lie."

AFP retraced the man's journey, beginning in the village of Omalo in Georgia's northeastern Pankisi Gorge, predominantly populated by the Muslim Kist minority who migrated from nearby Chechnya in the 19th century.

During the two Chechen wars of 1994-1996 and 1999-2009, the volatile region became a refuge for Islamist Chechen rebels and thousands of civilian refugees who crossed Georgia's porous mountain border to flee the conflict.

In 2004, with support from Washington, the Georgian government expelled Islamist guerrillas from Pankisi, yet by the 2010s, dozens of local Kists had joined the Islamic State........

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