A Georgian court has sentenced two Ukrainian nationals to seven and ten years in prison for smuggling military-grade explosives into the country.
The men were convicted by Tbilisi City Court of illegally acquiring, storing, transporting, and selling hexogen—a high-powered explosive known as RDX that is stronger than TNT—across Georgia’s borders.
Georgian security services discovered 2.4 kilograms of the explosive hidden inside a Mercedes-Benz truck with Ukrainian license plates in September 2025. The vehicle had entered Georgia through the Sarpi crossing from Türkiye, 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 intended for a residential building in Tbilisi’s Avlabari district. Although the truck driver claimed the shipment was destined for Russia under the guise of “Operation Spiderweb 2,” Georgia’s security service indicated the evidence pointed solely 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 in the post-Soviet Commonwealth. Speaking at a meeting of CIS security agencies on Tuesday, Bortnikov stated that Western influence had transformed Ukraine into a “testing ground” for new military technologies and artificial intelligence systems.
“Under the close supervision of the West, Ukraine has become a serious factor of instability in the Commonwealth area,” Bortnikov added, noting that Ukrainian crime groups were involved in synthetic drug production. He also reported that Russian and Belarusian security services had blocked an earlier attempt to smuggle more than 500 explosive devices into Russia.
Bortnikov’s comments followed earlier statements by Russia’s UN envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, who told the Security Council in April that weapons supplied to Ukraine were being distributed across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and claimed “one in three assault rifles” used by extremist groups originated from Ukraine.
