Ruling party MP: Kyiv’s accusations of Tbilisi supporting Russian smugglers “insulting”

The ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party MP Giorgi Kakhiani says that the recent statement of the Ukrainian intelligence service, that Russia is developing ways for smuggling via Georgia to bypass sanctions, “are absurd and insulting.”

 

Kakhiani says that the accusations could be connected with Gia Lortkipanidze, former United National Movement (UNM) official who is wanted by Georgian law enforcers and has been recently appointed in the Ukrainian counterintelligence service

 

Lortkipanidze, former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs under the UNM was appointed  Deputy Director of Counterintelligence of Ukraine earlier this month.

 

Lortkipanidze is being wanted by Georgian law enforcers for two separate cases one of which concerns the illegal entry of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to Georgia at the end of 2021.

 

Earlier Lortkipanidze chaired the  Odessa District Police Main Division in Ukraine. He resigned back in 2016.

 

Later charges against Lortkipanidze were filed in December 2021, shortly after Saakashvili was arrested in Tbilisi on October 1, 2021.

 

He is also charged with abuse of authority for the dispersal of an opposition rally in Tbilisi back in May 2011.