A few days ago the Georgian government complained that a Russian fighter tore through Georgian airspace, shot down one of their spy drones, and darted back across the border before anyone could respond to it. The drone was patrolling over Abkhazia, a province of Georgia with a majority Russian population, which has rebelled against the central government and wants to join the Russian Federation. The Russians have been supporting the rebels with weapons, money and - the Georgians say - occasional direct military action by Russian forces.
Both the Russian government and the Abkhaz rebels say it was Abkhazia, not the Russians, which shot down the drone. But, oops, in this dramatic footage (especially dramatic since it's taken from the doomed drone) you can see what is clearly a MiG-29 fighter approach from below and wipe the thing out with a short-range missile. The Abkhaz rebels don't have anything like the technological capacity to field fighter jets, so the MiG must have been Russian.
There's been a peace agreement between Abkhazia and Georgia since 1994 but this isn't likely to help the very tenuous truce between the two sides.
Posted by case at April 22, 2008 11:02 AM