MOSCOW. Aug 8 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Defense Ministry has denied reports that a body, discovered on the outskirts of Tbilisi, has been identified as that of missing Russian Colonel Igor Zaitsev.
"Representatives of the Russian troops group in the Trans- Caucasus have visited the scene and established that it was not the body of Colonel Zaitsev," Defense Ministry spokesman Nikolai Deryabin told Interfax-Military News Agency on Thursday.
A source in the Georgian Interior Ministry in turn told Interfax that the Georgian police had discovered the body of a man, buried about the days ago in a Tbilisi district.
He said the body had not been identified, "but is believed to be that of Colonel Igor Zaitsev who went missing in Tbilisi on July 27."
He also said that Zaitsev's son could not identify the body as that of his father. The body was also examined by a representative of the Russian troops group in the Trans-Caucasus.
Mass media earlier reported that the body of a man, presumably that of the envoy of the Russian government and of the command of the Russian armed forces in the Trans-Caucasus Colonel Igor Zaitsev, had been discovered on the outskirts of Tbilisi.
Colonel Zaitsev went missing on his way from the headquarters of the Russian troops group in the Trans-Caucasus to his mother's on July 27. The incident is being investigated by experts of the police department of the city's Vake-Saburtali district.