Posted on 08/06/2007 11:36:04 PM PDT by Blackyce
|
By Margarita Antidze
TSITELUBANI, Georgia (Reuters) - Georgia said on Tuesday that jets flown from Russia fired a missile on its territory, narrowly missing hitting a village, but Russia's military denied any involvement.
The missile landed without exploding in a vegetable field near the village of Tsitelubani, about 65 km (40 miles) west of the capital, Tbilisi, Georgian officials said.
Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said it was an "act of aggression."
Russia has a long history of tense relations with its smaller neighbor, but Russia's air force said its aircraft had flown no sorties over the area.
In Tsitelubani, an unexploded missile could be seen embedded in a crater around 5 meters (16 ft) deep in a field of corn and potatoes fringed with fruit trees.
A small farmhouse stood about 35 meters (114 ft 10 in) from the crater.
"It happened yesterday at 1930 local time. Two Su-24 jets flew here. Our radars show that these jets flew from Russia and then flew back in the same direction that they had come from," Merabishvili told Reuters.
"I assess this fact as an act of aggression carried out by planes flown from the territory of another state," he said.
SU-24s were introduced into the Soviet Union's air force in the 1970s. They were designed as all-weather attack aircraft.
Bomb disposal experts were working at the scene, which police had cordoned off. A few dozen of Tsitelubani's residents watched on the sidelines.
"I was sitting in my garden resting a bandaged leg when I saw a plane in the sky," Ilia Psuturi said. "I then saw smoke rising from the ground up to the sky and only then did I hear the explosion. The plane then turned around."
Shota Utiashvili, the head of the Georgian interior ministry's public relations department, earlier told Reuters that the Russian jets had dropped a 700 kilo (1,543 lb) bomb.
"Fortunately it didn't explode. If it had exploded it would have been a disaster," he added. He said nobody was hurt.
TENSE RELATIONS
Russia's airforce denied that it had bombed Georgia, and said it had not violated its airspace.
"Russia's airforce neither on Monday nor Tuesday flew flights over Georgia," Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky, aide to the commander of Russia's airforce, told Reuters.
"Russia has not violated the borders of sovereign Georgia."
The village of Tsitelubani is near the city of Gori, and a few kilometers to the south of Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region, a long-standing cause of friction between Russia and Tbilisi.
Russia provides moral and financial support for Georgia's rebel Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions. It has accused Tbilisi of pursuing anti-Russian policies.
Putin sure seems to have a need to compensate for anatomical shortcomings.
Putins boys hit the wrong Georgia. A miss-communication. They meant to take out our great former leader Carter in our Georgia since he is the worlds best election fraud spotter. /s
Yikes.
I wonder what Putin has up his sleeve this time.
I thought some one would do it.
It is worse than that. The Post-Cold-War era is worse than the Cold War, and the FSB are worse than the KGB. Assassinations, bombings, kidnap, false imprisonment, theft. They make the old KGB look lovable as an organisation.
Have a read of Alex Goldfarb’s “Death of a Dissident” on the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Goldfarb_%28microbiologist%29
The book makes exciting reading and is even more readable than the best Cold War memoir, Markus Wolf’s “Man Without a Face” but is depressing because the FSB are now the gangster capitalists which the old Soviet propaganda machine always accused the Imperialists of being.
The FSB killed Litvinenko alright, and the FSB is Putin.
They seem to have done at least two other hits with Polonium, but nothing is provable because with a large enough dose it kills you before it can be diagnosed. It half-life means that a year later, there is no trace of it anyway.
What went wrong with the Litvinenko assassination was the Lugovoi botched the dose, and Litvinenko was ill for long enough that they could contact institutions with machinery to detect Polonium. It does not show up on any normal tests in hospitals.
97% of the world’s Polonium comes from a plant near Gorky. It is not possible that it is Polonium from the old Soviet system because it has a half-life of only one year.
For the FSB to obtain the Polonium, they need to contact another state institution, and to do that they need co-operation at the level of Putin.
RAF jets were scrambled twice yesterday to intercept Russian aircraft heading for and inside British airspace.
Tornado fighters had already been sent up on Tuesday to meet two bombers approaching Britain from a Russian base in the Arctic Circle. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said it was “rare and unusual” for three incidents to follow so closely.
The aerial tensions come amid titfortat expulsions of diplomats following the Kremlin’s refusal to extradite radiation murder suspect Andrei Lugovoy. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said last night he wanted to see a return to “normal relations” with Britain.
But the arrival in yesterday’s early hours of the Tupolev aircraft - also known as Bears - suggests president Vladimir Putin is not backing down. Two Tornados were scrambled from RAF Leeming, near Darlington, after two Tu95 bombers were picked up on radar. They were intercepted inside British airspace shortly after 2am but, with the RAF pilots on their tail, the intruders turned and flew north.
This is showing up all over the MSM now.
It would be interesting to know what really happened here.
The FSB killed Litvinenko alright, and the FSB is Putin.==
Which is just one slander.. Goldfarb has no proves except the insinuations:).
97% of the world’s Polonium comes from a plant near Gorky. ==
But what is Gorky?
The aerial tensions come amid titfortat expulsions of diplomats following the Kremlin’s refusal to extradite radiation murder suspect Andrei Lugovoy. ==
The constitution of Russia forbids to extradite the citizen to the foreign power. Same as for American Constitution.
Is it? Read this:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00003196——000-.html
and
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/15mcrm.htm
I’m glad for the american citizens that they can be extradited to the foreign country:). But nevertheless Russia doesn’t surrender her citizens to the no foreign country. It is the constitutional forbiddance.
If the foreign country beleives that russian citizen commited some crime then the foreign country may present her evidences into the Russian court and look for the prosecution.
But Brits refused to go this way. Maybe they know that thier evidences are not that convincing?
You and I know that the Russian judicial system is a joke, the only law that is working is the Law of Gravity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.