What a pity that the Russians respawned in our neighbourhood.
I think we should try to block them with diplomats and a fortress (i.e. stay in demo and get wise) until we're able to clear up the thing with Shake. If we lose the race to Shake (which is *hopefully* unlikely), we'd delay our efforts until 1AD (revolt to monarchy or communism).
If I'm not mistaken, units in fortresses (f. 2 tiles away from city) do not cause ww (or was that civ2? Damn, I should look into the pedia...). Question is if a fortress on that spot 2 tiles SW of Spamyra counts as ww-free at all (?). That place would be ideal to block them for some time and even if they sneak attacked (since the buggers now could build cats), we have at least 1 turn time to react before they approach Spamyra.