The Russian Investigative Committee's charge that Ukrainian servicemen fought for Georgia in the August 2008 conflict in the Caucasus is a provocation, according to Stepan Havrysh, the first deputy secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council.
“It looks like the Investigative Committee’s statement was a quite expectable step in a chain of provocations addressed to and aimed against Ukraine,” he told Interfax on Tuesday.
Ukraine refuted these accusations earlier, Havrysh said.
“We earlier conducted quite an in-depth inquiry into the possibility that Ukrainian citizens might have taken part in the military conflict between Russia and Georgia on the Georgian side and quite an in-depth inquiry into our military contracts with Georgia,” he said.
“Russia has been provided with information, which proves documentarily that Ukraine assumed an absolutely neutral position during the armed conflict between Russia and Georgia,” Havrysh said.
Before the conflict erupted, Ukraine had been pursuing active military-technological cooperation with Georgia, because no embargo was imposed on that country either by an international organization or by Russia, Havrysh said.
“Ukraine was not the first country supplying weapons to Georgia. Ukraine did not ship heavy military equipment to Georgia,” he said.
In addition, “it is obvious, for instance, that not a single Ukrainian serviceman in Georgia was involved in the conflict and armed actions between Russia and Georgia,” he said.
“There was a group of servicemen there, who were conducting joint exercises with Georgian military units, but they received a special telephone message at the beginning of the armed actions and were evacuated within two days,” he said.
