{"id":1180,"date":"2026-05-26T14:49:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arabnewsmonitor.com\/2026\/05\/26\/georgia-jails-ukrainians-in-hexogen-case\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T14:49:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:49:41","slug":"georgia-jails-ukrainians-in-hexogen-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/?p=1180","title":{"rendered":"Georgia jails Ukrainians in \u2018hexogen case\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Tbilisi court has handed down seven- and ten-year prison terms over military-grade explosives smuggled through T\u00fcrkiye<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A Georgian court has jailed two Ukrainian nationals for smuggling military-grade explosives into the country.<\/p>\n

The men were sentenced to seven and ten years respectively after being convicted by the Tbilisi City Court of illegally acquiring, storing, transporting, and selling hexogen as well as smuggling the explosive material into Georgia.<\/p>\n

In September 2025, Georgian security services discovered 2.4 kg of hexogen \u2013 known as RDX and described by the authorities as a \u201chigh-powered explosive stronger than TNT\u201d<\/em> \u2013 hidden inside a Mercedes-Benz truck with Ukrainian license plates. The vehicle had reportedly entered Georgia through the Sarpi crossing from T\u00fcrkiye, having traveled via Romania and Bulgaria.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"Source:
Explosives in Ukrainian \u2018icons\u2019 enough to destroy five-story building \u2013 FSB<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThe defendants were found guilty of the illegal acquisition, storage, carrying, and sale of explosives, as well as smuggling them across the Georgian customs border,\u201d<\/em> the court said.<\/p>\n

Investigators said the explosives were destined for a residential building in Tbilisi\u2019s Avlabari district. Although the truck driver reportedly claimed the shipment was headed to Russia as part of \u2018Operation Spiderweb 2\u2019, Georgia\u2019s security service said the evidence pointed only to the Tbilisi address.<\/p>\n

The ruling came as Russian FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov accused Ukraine of turning into \u201cEurope\u2019s largest hub of weapons and ammunition trafficking\u201d<\/em> and being a driver of instability across the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Speaking on Tuesday at a meeting of CIS security agencies, Bortnikov said the West had transformed Ukraine into a \u201ctesting ground\u201d<\/em> for new weapons and military artificial intelligence systems.<\/p>\n

\n
\n READ MORE: <\/span>Poland braces for flood of Ukrainian guns \u2013 media
\n <\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the close supervision of the West Ukraine has become a serious factor of instability in the Commonwealth area\u201d<\/em> Bortnikov stated, adding that Ukrainian crime groups were involved in synthetic drug production. According to Bortnikov, Russian and Belarusian security services blocked an attempt earlier this year to smuggle more than 500 explosive devices into Russia.<\/p>\n

The comments echoed earlier statements by Russia\u2019s UN envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, who told the Security Council in April that weapons supplied to Ukraine were ending up in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and claimed \u201cone in three assault rifles\u201d<\/em> used by extremist groups came from Ukraine.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Tbilisi court has handed down seven- and ten-year prison terms over military-grade explosives smuggled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}