MOSCOW, July 28 (Itar-Tass) – An article in The Washington Times alleging that the September 22, 2010, explosion near the U.S. embassy compound in the Georgian capital Tbilisi was linked to Russia’s ostensible efforts to destabilize Georgia is an instance of propaganda hoopla, a high-rank Russian diplomat said Thursday.
“It looks like this article was designed to raise a second information stir around the issues that the Americans and we ourselves have already discussed in the past,” said Grigory Karassin, a Deputy Foreign Minister.
“Given the obvious sensitiveness of the problem and the hints at the involvement of Russian intelligence services in terrorist acts in Georgia, we treated it with due seriousness and conducted a special investigation with the assistance from our countries’ appropriate professional agencies,” he said.
“Russia reported the results of the work to both the American side and the Georgian government,” Karassin said.
The Washington Times cited an investigation by the Georgian Interior Ministry saying the explosion “was traced to a plot run by a Russian intelligence officer.”
The article quoted Shota Utiashvili, the Interior Ministry’s top intelligence analyst, saying that “the recent spate of bombings and attempted bombings […] was the work of Russian GRU /military intelligence/ officer Major Yevgeny Borisov.”
The combination of this first name and second name is as frequent in Russia as ‘Nick Brown’ or ‘Stanley Jones’ in any English-speaking country.
The Washington Times also alleged that Major Borisov, who reportedly operates from the territory of the Republic of Abkhazia, was “the mastermind behind a spate of 12 bombings and attempted bombings throughout the country in the past year.”
“Such issues should be considered diligently and without any propaganda noise but this apparently runs counter to the objectives pursued by the engineers of this campaign,” Grigory Karassin said.
He reiterated that Russia keeps the channels for exchanging information on security issues open.
In the meantime, the U.S. Department of State declined to comment on the article in The Washington Times.