Russia warns of bloodshed if Georgia repeats peacekeeper arrest

Yesterday a senior Russian military official warned of possible bloodshed if Georgia detains Russian peacekeepers again.

The comment came days after Georgia briefly detained four Russian peacekeepers south of the Abkhazian conflict zone and confiscated anti-tank missiles which Tbilisi says violate the peacekeeping mandate.

Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Burutin, the First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said that under the circumstances the peacekeepers had the “full right” to defend themselves.

“In the future we cannot guarantee that they will not use [their weapons]. Their self-restraint is not limitless,” he said, adding that resistance would inevitably result in casualties.

Tbilisi said it is not threatened by Moscow’s “rhetoric.”

“As far as the threat of bloodshed is concerned, we hear this rhetoric constantly from our northern neighbor; the only thing I can tell them is that we are not afraid, if they want—let them try,” Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told reporters yesterday.

Georgian military expert Koba Liklikadze said the recent detention of Russian peacekeepers in Zugdidi, the Georgian district below Abkhazia, was a legal but “very risky” move.

“Peacekeepers had commands to transport missiles, so if anyone stops them in the security zone, which Zugdidi is regrettably a part of, they have the right to open fire [to protect themselves],” Liklikadze said.

While Georgia had a right to check the peacekeepers’ military cargo, he said, it was “extremely risky business.”

In an apparently unrelated incident, two small explosions hit a railway track in the de facto Abkhaz capital of Sokhumi on June 18.

The blasts left no casualties. Abkhaz separatist officials labeled them a “diversion” but stopped short of pointing the finger at Tbilisi.

“We don’t have any information on the blast, other than the Abkhaz statement. In any case, the Georgian side doesn’t have any connection with the blast,” a representative of Georgia’s Interior Ministry said, according to the news agency Interfax.

Georgia has stepped up calls for a revision of the Russian-led peacekeeping format in its conflict regions in recent weeks, after Russia moved to increase formal ties with the separatist regimes before deploying more of its troops to Abkhazia.