MOSCOW. July 21 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Armed Forces General Staff is not planning to station S-300 air defense missile systems in Abkhazia, head of the Defense Ministry press service Colonel Nikolai Deryabin told Interfax-Military News Agency on Monday.
"The Defense Ministry does not assign its forces to foreign territories, and Abkhazia, as we know, is a territory of another state. I am informing you officially that the Russian Armed Forces General Staff is not planning to station S-300 missile systems in Abkhazia," Deryabin said.
"I am very surprised with the insistence of some authors who regularly raise the issue of alleged consideration by the General Staff of several different variants of S-300V systems relocation to the Abkhaz territory," he added.
"I am repeating this again: this step is absolutely absurd from both military and political points of view. The Russian peacekeeping contingent in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zones has the composition and armament determined by the mandate of the CIS heads of state and parties to the conflict," Deryabin stressed.