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Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the European Union

Submitted on 2015-07-22 22:00:00

Comment by the Information and Press Department on an extraordinary meeting of the Joint Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) on the Georgian-South Ossetian border

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An extraordinary meeting of the Joint Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) on the Georgian-South Ossetian border was held on July 20 upon Tskhinval’s initiative in light of a recent provocation involving border signs placed by South Ossetian guards.

It turned out that the information on the alleged positioning of border signs deeper into Georgian territory, which was issued by the Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry of Georgia and promptly taken up by the media, is not true. The Russian and South Ossetian representatives at the meeting pointed to the obviously provocative nature of that action, which was staged to create a negative international reaction to the strengthening of the South Ossetian state and to discredit South Ossetian and Russian border guards.
These actions, as well as the continuing deliberate infliction of damage on South Ossetia’s border signs can only increase tensions in the border territories. We hope that Georgia will avoid such ungrounded and politicised provocations that could destabilise the situation in the region.

22 July 2015