UN Claims Georgian Spy Drone Shot Down By Russians, Government Denies it

The United Nations said on Monday that a Russian air force plane shot down an unmanned Georgian spy drone over Abkhazia last month, strengthening Tbilisi's claims that Moscow is aiding the rebel territory.

A U.N. report compiled from video footage, witness statements and radar records was the weightiest independent endorsement to date of Tbilisi's allegation -- denied by Moscow -- that a Russian jet downed its spy plane on April 20.

The report said radar records showed the fighter jet headed into Russian airspace after shooting down the spy plane over breakaway Abkhazia.

Russia's defense ministry on Monday rejected a UN report which backed Georgia's claims that a Russian jet had shot down an unmanned Georgian drone over the break away region of Abkhazia last month.

"There can't be any talk of any violation of Georgia's state border, to say nothing of shooting down an unmanned aircraft," said Alexander Drobyshevsky, a ministry spokesman.

Meanwhile, Russia's Interfax news agency reported Abkhazia's de facto foreign minister Sergei Shamba, as saying that the UN report was "unobjective and biased."

A United Nations investigation has concluded that an unmanned Georgian reconnaissance aircraft destroyed last month was struck by an air-to-air missile fired from a Russian fighter jet.

The report, which also suggested that Russia's actions call into question its role as a credible peacekeeper in Georgia's territorial disputes, presented the Kremlin with a diplomatic embarrassment over its policy in Abkhazia, a separatist region in western Georgia that receives Russian support, and its statements about its military activities there.

Moreover, the report detailed a degree of military recklessness not previously reported, noting that the fighter plane's "interception took place very close to, or even inside, an international airway" at a time when "civilian aircraft were flying."

The Russian military, which had claimed that all of its pilots were on vacation the day the drone was shot down - and then that an American F-18 shot down the drone - again denied a role in the incident.

But it offered no specific evidence or rebuttals against the finely nuanced accounts and analyses of the flight paths of the drone and the intercepting aircraft, which were prepared by a fact-finding team of military aviation experts and released Monday.