EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Georgia Admits To Having Shot At Intruding Aircraft

EURASIA INSIGHT

GEORGIA ADMITS TO HAVING SHOT AT INTRUDING AIRCRAFT
8/27/07
A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL

Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told RFE/RL on August 25 that "warning shots" were fired at an aircraft that entered Georgian airspace over the upper Kodori Gorge on August 21. He said the ministry has dispatched investigators to the gorge to check out eyewitness reports by residents of a subsequent explosion, possibly when the aircraft crashed. Utiashvili was earlier quoted by AP as saying the incident occurred on August 22 and that the plane in question was Russian. Sergei Bagapsh, president of the unrecognized republic of Abkhazia, was quoted by Interfax on August 25 as saying no evidence has been found that any plane crashed on Abkhaz territory; the Abkhaz authorities control the lower reaches of the Kodori Gorge. Abkhaz armed forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Anatoly Zaitsev was quoted by kavkazweb.net as saying that an aircraft crashed in the Kodori Gorge on August 22 after entering Abkhaz airspace from the southwest, but he ruled out the possibility that it was downed by Georgian fire, and denied having identified it earlier as a U.S. reconnaissance plane. The website apsny.ru on August 27 quoted Abkhaz Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba as having told RIA Novosti that the incident took place on August 22 and that the Abkhaz authorities assume that the aircraft in question was Georgian. Shamba said eyewitnesses "heard a crash and a subsequent explosion," but he did not say that the aircraft was fired on. On August 24, gazeta.ru quoted Russian Air Force spokesman Colonel Aleksandr Drobyshevsky as denying earlier Georgian allegations that a Russian aircraft violated Georgian airspace on August 22 and was shot down (see "RFE/RL Newsline," August 23 and 24, 2007). LF

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