South Ossetia is complaining that a Georgian drone aircraft violated its airspace Sunday night, and that it shot at the UAV -- and will do so again. And Tskhinvali somewhat unconvincingly is calling the event an attention-seeking attempt by Tbilisi.
According to Interfax:
An observation post of the South Ossetian Defense Ministry noticed the Georgian drone at about 6:00 p.m. on November 14, and the drone was fired at, he said.
In the words of Yakhnovets, Georgian drones regularly breach the South Ossetian airspace, from four to eight times per month.
The South Ossetian Foreign Ministry, in a statement in connection with the November 14 drone incident, described it as a regular provocation by Georgia, apparently timed to coincide with the 56th session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly session under way in Warsaw.
"It has become customary for Georgia to draw attention to itself on the eve of or during major international events in a bid to secure support from Western countries for its ambitions," the statement says.
So in other words, Georgia does this four to eight times a month, but South Ossetia never announces it, except that this particular time it was a NATO-related provocation? Who, again, is trying to call attention to this issue on the eve of a major international event?
Georgia responded to the complaints by saying that it had every right to fly the UAVs. According to Kavkas Press, via BBC Monitoring:
"If Georgian unmanned aircraft did fly over Tskhinvali, Georgia has a sovereign right to this," Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze said at a regular briefing on Monday [15 November].
"I do not know whether or not Georgian unmanned aircraft did fly over Georgian territory [as given], but even if they did so, the country has a sovereign right to this, because this is our territory," Kalandadze said.
In what seems like it might be a related development, someone has "leaked" to the Russian press an improbable story about Georgia buying top-of-the-line Israeli Merkava-4 tanks, and an Ossetian analyst calls the story "a provocation of Georgian media." Given that the story seems to have appeared first on a Russian website that claim is not especially credible.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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