Georgia has announced that a Russian MiG-29 fighter shot down a Georgian Hermes 450 unmanned surveillance drone over Abkhazia, a Georgian province that proclaimed independence from Georgia a few years ago after a rather nasty civil war.
This led to a rather heated 40-minute conversation between the presidents Putin and Saakashvili, and now Georgia has requested for the UN Security Council to be convened to address what Georgia calls "an act of military aggression."
To all three of you remembering my earlier diary on the subject of breakaway regions in the Balkans and Caucasus, this should come as no big surprise...
In the last couple of weeks, Russia has been slowly increasing the level of recognition of two breakaway regions in Georgia - Abkhazia and South Ossetia - using the declaration of independence of Kosovo as the precedent. The government of Georgia is not too happy about it.
The drone incident ratchets up tension and provides an excellent opportunity for both Putin and Saakashvili to flex their muscles and posture. But what did really happen?
Hermes 450 is an Israeli made surveillance drone. Georgia's government bought a bunch a few years ago. Interestingly, so did US Border Patrol. On Sunday, this Hermes was patrolling Abkhazian airspace near the administrative border between Abkhazia and Georgia monitoring "militant forces buildup" (Georgia considers it Georgian airspace). Abkhazian paramilitary claimed to have shot it down, which Georgia vehemently denied, as well as even having this type of drone. However, a day later, they said that not only had they lost the drone, but they had footage of it being shot by a Russian MiG (again in nominally Georgian airspace).
Oh, and here's the video footage (for some reason, I could only find it in Al Jazeera coverage on Youtube. Go figure...)
The Abkhazian version is that the drone was indeed shot down by a plane, but it was an Abkhazian L-39. The L-39 (left) does not look much like the plane in the video though - that one is a twin-tail fighter like a MiG-29 (or an F-15). Is the video legit? Looks all right, but then, so does this video of a UFO crash over White Sands...
It also may be that the video is legit, but comes from an earlier instance of a Russian plane taking a potshot at one of the drones, perhaps in Russian airspace (again, claims of such encounters did arise several times and were vehemently denied).
UPDATE.
Here is what a MiG-29 launching a missile looks like (this one actually belongs to the German air force).
For comparison, I also add an image pull from the video - looks like a twin-tail, twin-engine jet...
Oh, and here's what's left of the drone (ITAR-TASS).
In any case, trouble is brewing...