Rustavi is a city in the southeast of Georgia, in the province of Kartli, situated 16 miles (25 km) southeast of the capital Tbilisi on the Kura river. Its population was estimated in 2002 to be 100,000 people.

The city was founded in 1948 to house the workforce of a nearby metallurgical plant, constructed in 1941-1950 to process iron ore from nearby Azerbaijan. It took its name from a nearby ancient town which was destroyed by the Mongol leader Tamerlane around 1400. Rustavi has since become a key industrial centre for the Transcaucasus region. The main industries are iron and steel milling and the manufacture of metal products and chemicals.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 proved disastrous for Rustavi, as it also caused the collapse of the integrated Soviet economy on which the city depended. Today, only three plants out of 118 are still active and 65% of the city's population is unemployed, with all of the attendant social problems of high crime and acute poverty that such a situation brings. The population shrank from from 160,000 in the mid-1990s to 100,000 in 2002 as residents moved elsewhere in search of work.