Georgian authorities said Monday that they thwarted plans coordinated by a Ukrainian citizen to smuggle several explosive devices from Ukraine to Russia via Georgia.
Tbilisi has been accused of increased cooperation with the Kremlin, even though Russian forces have been deployed to parts of Georgia since 2008, when Moscow invaded the Caucasus country.
Six devices were “brought to Georgia on January 19 from the Ukrainian city of Odessa, via Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, on a minivan belonging to a Ukrainian national,” the Georgian security service said.
They contained 14 kilograms of C-4, a plastic explosive substance.
Authorities confiscated three of them at the Georgian-Russian border checkpoint, and found three others in the capital Tbilisi, the security service said in its statement.
Andrei Sharashidze, a Ukrainian national of Georgian origin, coordinated the plan, according to the statement.
Seven Georgians, three Ukrainians, and two Armenians also participated in transporting the explosive devices but “none of them was aware of the presence of explosives” in the minivan, the statement said.
Georgia’s rapprochement with Moscow has strained ties between Tbilisi and Kyiv.
Relations further soured when Georgian authorities jailed pro-Western ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, who holds Ukrainian citizenship.
Zelensky has accused the Georgian authorities of “slowly killing Saakashvili” in custody on the Kremlin’s orders as doctors said the politician’s health has deteriorated.
Georgia’s government said in September that the deputy chief of Ukraine’s military counterintelligence and Georgia’s former deputy interior minister, Giorgi Lortkipanidze, was plotting a coup in Georgia.
In July, Kyiv ordered the Georgian ambassador to leave the country, a year after recalling its envoy from Tbilisi.
The same month, Ukraine sanctioned Georgian flagship airline, Georgian Airways, over the resumption of flights to Russia.
