Georgia says that Russian aircraft violated its airspace on August 21, raising tension weeks after the country claimed a plane coming from Russia dropped a missile on its territory.
Aleksandr Drobyshevsky, the Spokesman for the Russian Air Force, denies the accusations. “Aircraft of the Russian Air Forces did not violate Georgia's airspace on August 21. Russian combat aircraft did not fly near the Georgian borders, including the Kodori Gorge, on Tuesday,” he stated. The Georgian Defence Ministry, however, stands its ground claiming Russian planes did violate the country’s sovereign airspace. “The Georgian radar system has adequate capability to monitor this type of violation even when they are small-scale. When I am saying ‘small-scale’, I mean that these planes penetrated only five kilometers, but still it’s a violation of sovereign airspace. They were moving at approximately 500 kms per hour speed, which drives us to the conclusion that they were Su-type aircraft, but the type is not known in detail,” Batu Kutelia, Georgia’s Deputy Defence Minister, commented.