A Tbilisi court has handed down seven- and ten-year prison terms over military-grade explosives smuggled through Türkiye
A Georgian court has jailed two Ukrainian nationals for smuggling military-grade explosives into the country.
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.
In September 2025, Georgian security services discovered 2.4 kg of hexogen – known as RDX and described by the authorities as a “high-powered explosive stronger than TNT” – hidden inside a Mercedes-Benz truck with Ukrainian license plates. The vehicle had reportedly entered Georgia through the Sarpi crossing from Türkiye, having traveled via Romania and Bulgaria.
“The defendants were found guilty of the illegal acquisition, storage, carrying, and sale of explosives, as well as smuggling them across the Georgian customs border,” the court said.
Investigators said the explosives were destined for a residential building in Tbilisi’s Avlabari district. Although the truck driver reportedly claimed the shipment was headed to Russia as part of ‘Operation Spiderweb 2’, Georgia’s security service said the evidence pointed only to the Tbilisi address.
The ruling came as Russian FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov accused Ukraine of turning into “Europe’s largest hub of weapons and ammunition trafficking” 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 “testing ground” for new weapons and military artificial intelligence systems.
“Under the close supervision of the West Ukraine has become a serious factor of instability in the Commonwealth area” 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.
The comments echoed earlier statements by Russia’s 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 “one in three assault rifles” used by extremist groups came from Ukraine.
