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Russia Accused in Drone Incident
Georgian authorities reported an incident yesterday in the air near the village of Tsitelubani, near Gori. They claim that a Russian unpiloted flying device was downed at that time. According to head of the Georgian Interior Ministry information office Shota Utiashvili, “A small, unpiloted flying device was discovered by a Georgian patrol flying at a height of 50 meters above the Baku-Supsa pipeline.” Utiashvili said that the police shot the device down with automatic weapons. It was equipped with a camera. The device shown at a press conference yesterday was similar to a model airplane.
Russia denies that information. Acting head of the Russian Defense Ministry press service Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky called the incident “The latest informational provocation by the Georgian side with the goal of destabilizing the situation in the region.” There were several incidents before the war this year between Moscow and Tbilisi involving drones in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. One of those incidents resulted in a Georgian drone being shot down by Russian aviation over Abkhazia on April 20. Georgia initiated a session of the UN Security Council over the incident. The Georgian Foreign Ministry said it plans to protest the current incident as a violation of the Sarkozy-Medvedev peace agreement.
Military expert Georgian Murman Kupriashvili told Kommersant that such a small device would be highly effective for intelligence gathering. Although it was unable to transmit images as it recorded them, it would difficult to detect because it would not show up on radar.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 24, 2008
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